After having a few data corruption issues in the last few weeks related to the Windows system I use for work, I decided it was time to give Unbuntu a try. I have been playing with the Unbuntu 5.10 that comes with VMWare player and have been very pleasantly surprised. The distro seemed to have a nice interface and was easy to configure, so why not give it a try on a machine.

Last Friday I setup an old Dell 4100 to be my Ubuntu 5.10 Linux workstation. The installation went pretty smoothly, all the hardware was detected, no problems.

So I have been using the machine as my primary workstation all week and I gotta say, I'm sold on this distro. First off, someone has finally got the user inteface right on Linux. Is it as slick as a Mac? No. But is doesn't need to be. It just needs to be consistent and easy to use. Ubuntu is both. You do an apt-get install gftp, the gftp package gets installed on your system and added to your menu in the Internet folder. Want to add that program to your quick lanch bar? No problem, just right click the icon and add it. Need to change a preference? Click System -> Settings and there your are. You can pretty much configure everything right there.

My experience with the Red Hat and SUSE based distos was never that smooth. The menu's were always hosed. It was tough to add new packages, and adding an icon to the quick launch bar was beyond mere mortals. Everything was funky in a bad way. I had played with apt on some of these distros, but it never worked as advertised. It is just cool on Ubuntu. Now I can see why people have raved about it so much. Installing and updating applications is a breeze.

Anyway, if you have been looking for a good Linux distsro to get your feet wet, check out Ubuntu 5.10. It just rocks. Its fun to use Linux again!