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I too have tried and liked it.  I have it installed on my B&W G3 on a second partition, and on an AMD 64 machine as well.  I downloaded it, but also ordered some CDs and was impressed with them as well.  I am using Kubuntu (kde version), and I enjoy it.  Very well put together, well organized, and very easy to teach-with that nice packaging you mentioned, that helps.  Some people just don't understand that the best software doesn't come in a pretty box sometimes...it makes them look like what they are, legit. 

edit:  distrowatch's tracking of hits per day for the last 6 months (average):  distrowatch
Rank      Distribution      H.P.D*
1     Ubuntu     2755>
2     Mandriva     1692<
3     SUSE     1329<
4     Fedora     1282>
5     MEPIS     1125>
6     KNOPPIX     909=
7     Debian     875=
8     Damn Small     682=
9     Gentoo     634=
10     Slackware     598<        *My favorite for older hardware and laptops has to be slackware.
11     Kubuntu     474>
12     FreeBSD     450=
13     SLAX     411<
14     Xandros     391>
15     PCLinuxOS     385=
16     Vector     362=
17     PC-BSD     362<
18     CentOS     344>
19     Libranet     332<
20     KANOTIX     31

They have been steadily climbing the ranks as a usable, clean, and well designed system.  I loaned a set of the ppc cds to a friend, who has a G5 and an old imac G3, and he has enjoyed them.  A good way to get others into linux, just to show them that there are alternatives, especially for people who have older hardware, and just need the basics (web, school work, etc), you can get all of it for free.  Way to go ubuntu team!

Last edited by kex215 (2005-09-23 4:19 pm)

Ubuntu installed flawlessly on my old G4/400. Either than trivial apperierance quibbles it couldent have been easier.
All 3 of my attached CD/DVD drives were recognised and worked fine. My 3rd party USB card was recognised, as was my 3rd party wireless card. Basically everything worked.
Firefox works even better under Ubuntu than under OSX and I found the way Ubuntu rendered type on web pages to be far clearer and easier to read than with OSX.
Surfing is a pleasure with Ubuntu and I found the Gnome desktop to be pretty nice all in all.
Other than that I found no real joy in Ubuntu. I spent the better part of an afternoon messing around with every graphics app I could find and dident find any that were anything near what I would discribe as being usefull. Since digital photography is my main thing thats my personal litmus test for the usefullness of a plateform.
I found the documentation to be pretty lacking: One would think with a Linux distro there would be some instructions on how to compile an app from source but I dident even find a mention of doing that in the built in help files.
Gnome seemed pretty polished so I guess my critisism of Ubuntu is no different than my general impression of open source applications. With the exception of some really nice projects like OO.o, Firefox and Nvu most OSS apps are pretty sucktacular. Reminding me of the sort of freeware one would find availible on Windows 95 just after it came out.
So I guess my conclusion is that Ubuntu is indeed very, very nice as an OS but lacks good applications.

I tried installing it in Virtual PC and it sent my Mac into a kernel panic.  First Windows 98 crashed my Mac and now Linux crashed my Mac.

It probably crashed trying to probe your hardware, since it's emulated.

Just boot off the CD - still non-destrutive, and fully functional.

-Tim

I tried it on my iMac, it did an excellent job configuring itself. I couldn't stand it though.

That's probably the backbreaker for Linux right now...there are a lot of apps, but they are difficult to install or lack conventional interfaces.  Many of these apps are powerful, but they feel like cheap freeware. 

I have Ubuntu installed on a frankenpc, and I really like the OS.  So far, however, I have not figured out how to permanently mount Windows volumes on the desktop, could not get my Sony laptop to work with it on the network, and have yet to find a video player (or the codecs) that will allow me to play DIVX or WMA files.  These things kind of frustrate me.  I am also looking for a good comic reader app as well.  That said, I do like it, and will continue to play with it.  Linux seems to have come a long way in the last few years, but a noob like myself still has a lot to learn before I can really enjoy it to its full potential.

volk wrote:

That's probably the backbreaker for Linux right now...there are a lot of apps, but they are difficult to install or lack conventional interfaces.  Many of these apps are powerful, but they feel like cheap freeware.

They are not difficult to install if they have been packaged in your distributions repository.
If an app isn't packaged in your distributions repository, it usually either

a) has a licensing problem
b) has a patent problem
c) Is a fairly new project
d) Has some serious flaws

-=-
Rarely do I venture away from what is packaged for my choice distro.
Some recent exceptions:
  1) tex4ht
  That program is young, it does not come with a configure script or makefile, but it is extremely
  useful for turning LaTeX into html/xml. It is packaged for some distributions.

  2) xgalaga
  requires several patches to build in Fedora. It's a fun game.

I have Ubuntu installed on a frankenpc, and I really like the OS.  So far, however, I have not figured out how to permanently mount Windows volumes on the desktop,

Have you asked on a ubuntu user list?

and have yet to find a video player (or the codecs) that will allow me to play DIVX or WMA files.

Install the gstreamer-ffmpeg package.
On a mac, it kind of sucks - but on a PC, gstreamer-ffmpeg handles divx extremely well.
WMA could use some help. Sometimes they play decently, sometimes they don't. I think it depends upon what version of wma they were encoded to.

These things kind of frustrate me.  I am also looking for a good comic reader app as well.

What's a comic reader?

MuckSavage wrote:

I think my favorite distro right now is the Fedora Core series, but I have an old frankenpc that fc4 runs like crap on. (700hmz celeron) FC 4 really needs a recent pc.

I've tried Ubuntu, and it is by far the most user friendly distro I've ever used. Linux still has a way to go to become a mainstream desktop OS, but it's constantly getting better. Ubuntu also runs pretty well on that old hunk of smurf pc I have.

One thing I have to say is Ubuntu ran really well on my old G4/400, but I have a pretty decent video card and over a gig of ram so I am sure that helped alot.

MuckSavage wrote:

I think my favorite distro right now is the Fedora Core series, but I have an old frankenpc that fc4 runs like crap on. (700hmz celeron) FC 4 really needs a recent pc.

It (fc4) runs OK on my Thinkpad T20 - which is 700MHz Pentium III (Coppermine) w/ 256 MB of ram.

Some python apps bring it to its knees, and too many firefox tabs open at once do the same - especially with flash/java in the various tabs.

Transcode from DVD video to H264. That'll teach the bastard.

P.S.
This was on live CD's only...

Thanks for the imput, won't burn anymore time on that...

I don't wanna take over this thread, but one more thing is the fact that you have to use a drop-down for subnets--my workplace uses a custom subnet! Why didn't they make it just a text field?!

I'm gonna install it on my P3 ThinkPad tomorrow and see what happens.