First impressions: Ubuntu Linux

There are enough Linux distributions out there to choke anOC48, so why giveUbuntu Linuxthe time of day? For one reason, it packs Gnome 2.8 and Kernel 2.6.8–the latest and greatest at the time of this writing; for another, it’s built on the rock-solid Debian; and lastly, the Ubuntu team has tried extremely hard to come up with a distributionthat just works.

To that end, the distribution ships on one ISO instead of the customary three, four, or five, and the installer tries its absolute hardest to use sane defaults and not engage the user in anal-retentive amounts of decision-making. Ubuntu’s installer, while ncurses-based and thus not particularly appealing from an eye-candy standpoint, gets the job done with as little pain as possible. If your network is set up to use DHCP, very little configuration is necessary. Boot, point to a hard drive, and off it goes. After a reboot, the system asks you to create a user account and which time zone you’re in. Optionally, if you’re on a fast connection, you can elect to let the system automatically update itself to the latest and greatest. As of last night, that involved downloading about 170MB of packages.

And then, a clean and inviting desktop in pleasant and muted earth colors.

On an nForce2 system, Ubuntu found all the components and configured them correctly. Bravo.

The package selection made by the Ubunty team provides for a very sane desktop right off the bat, with Firefox and Evolution forming the cornerstone, and other packages just a quick apt-get away. Less is more. It’s extremely nice to see a Linux distribution attempt to do away with the arcana and technical navel-gazing that tends to permeate the scene.

There are some drawbacks, such as the need to use binaries compiled for Ubuntu instead of standard Debian binaries, but there are already a lot of packages ready, and more are forthcoming, so unless you have special needs, this shouldn’t be a deal breaker.

I’m looking forward to seeing what the future holds for Ubuntu.

Listening To:"Procession" by VNV Nationitunes

Posted by Nic Lindh at September 27, 2004 05:19 PM |TrackBack

September 27th, 2004 in Mac Technology