[netstrider]

I just installed Ubuntu 8.04 LTS which arrived by post this afternoon and I realized how easy Linux or at least Ubuntu Linux is.

Booted up with a LiveCD, chose the partition on which I wanted it installed and chose to preserve my current Debian partition with my old /home and /music partitions also preserved but auto-mounted. I also automatically imported all my Bookmarks from my Debian's "Iceweasel" web browser.

After installation everything was mounted, I then linked /mnt/debian/home/uholtz/ to ~/uholtz@debian to have all my info easily available (I didn't choose to share the home partition) and when I tried playing a song Totem downloaded the necessary codecs for me. I added my songs to my playlist from my music partition and that's that.

For the sake of it, I went to System >> Administration and installed the restricted nVidia drivers, rebooted and installed compiz-manager through Synaptic and I was off to having a beautiful desktop with wobbly effects bla bla you know it already...

Then I opened Firefox and went to Youtube. It complained about missing Flash plugins, I clicked "Install Missing Plugins" button in Firefox and it gave me three options, the non-free Adobe version, gnash and a flash player of some sort. That took a second or two now I can view Youtube movies.

Now I've got exactly what I had on Debian and all in a matter of.. well a couple of minutes. Just how easy has Linux become?

Not to mention the Wubi installer there for Windows users (something I haven't tried).

-- From a growingly satisfied Linux user

[MikeTbob]

You describe all the reasons people voted Ubuntu the best Distro for new Users.
http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/cof...rs-2008-a.html
At 45% I'd say Ubuntu kicked some serious @ss

[jayd512]

Indeed! I happen to know a couple of people who have fairly limited working knowledge of what happens 'under the hood' and yet have almost no issues with Ubuntu... not any worth mentioning anyway.

[darkrose0510]

I suggested Ubuntu to a vista user earlier today... an hour later they had it downloaded, installed, and running.

[bigtomrodney]

I've always liked a challenge and used to really give myself to a distro to learn all of its ins and outs. But I've also had to maintain a strong preference for distros that will 'just work' so that I can get around to my daily business and of course not fall victim to the visitor curse...The usual plead of "This normally works, this is the first time this hasn't worked I swear!" isn't very convincing to friends and guests when you need to get something done.

Ubuntu has been my full time distro since I switched away from SUSE at the 10.3 release. I had been running it on a laptop since Dapper but I was impressed with the hardware detection, boot time and general cohesive feeling of the distro. And although I will always choose open source over proprietary where it is even halfway to being a viable option I was getting sick of chasing down codecs and repositories every reinstall and in the case of SUSE having regressions with hardware that previously worked but they had decided to drop because of licensing.

I still play with other distros and will always keep SLAX on my USB pen drive but I fully expect Ubuntu to be my distro of choice for the foreseeable future, and I've already watched most of my family switch to Ubuntu too.

[elija]

I am using Ubuntu 8.04 and for the time being it has stopped me
distro hopping. I put the CD in and I got a working system. The
NVIDIA drivers installed at a click as did flash.

The sheer ease of installation, configuration and use makes me
wonder about people who find it too difficult. Or at least those who
complain loudly about it being difficult.

I would be more forgiving if they were talking about Debian or Slackware or
if they have made a really stange first distro choice Gentoo or LFS!

[netstrider]

Originally Posted by bigtomrodney

I've always liked a challenge and used to really give myself to a distro to learn all of its ins and outs. But I've also had to maintain a strong preference for distros that will 'just work' so that I can get around to my daily business and of course not fall victim to the visitor curse

Ditto