Ubuntu 8.10

1) I will stay on Ubuntu 8.10 because 8.04.2 and 9.04 didn't work for me so good.Once every session 8.04.2 was fully locking my system.2) 9.04, the best until now but disappointed with ATI support.My screen was flickering all the time like the old movies my grandpa was an actor in.

I tried both live CD and install to explore the ubuntu world. The Gnome desktop interface consumes small amount of system resources which is good for low end systems. Casual games similar to windows are available in this OS also such as Freecell and many games are also installed like chess, tetris and four or more etc. The installation seems to take less time than the windows OS. This single CD which mailed freely by the owner can be used as live or install CD as per the user preference.

Also there are some useful open source windows tools packed in it.

Both the live and install versions contains useful software for normal users and are installed including Open Office, Firefox, Evolution(mail client), CD/DVD creator and Totem Player etc.

Most popular media formats are not supported in Totem Player. Only Ogg vorbis and Flac are playable. To play DivX, MP3 and WMV files it requires codec downloads. For every beginner who want to explore the Ubuntu and take a good experience in Linux, it is good starting point.

My first installation of Ubuntu 8.10 on a toshiba laptop went off without a hitch. My second installation on an ancient e-machines desktop would have been a disaster had I not backed everything up prior to starting. I got a bad NVIDEA driver that broke the GUI and the easiest thing was to just reload the system. the problem was I didn't know which driver was the bad one because nothing bad happened until I restarted so I didn't pay good enough attention. My Irish luck held and I picked the same (bad) one again and, guess what, had to reload it again, but this time I knew which was the bad one on my machine. The moral of this story is that while the OS itself is rock solid everything else is still a work in progress. At least you get what you pay for ;-). If you're mostly using Firefox, Pidgin and OpenOffice now then you've no reason not to switch. You're over half way there. They all run better in Ubuntu since they're native there, not ported. If you download the wine extension, which is free, you can even run portableapps and other windows applications, although some run better than others. One thing you'll notice after installing Ubuntu is how fast your computer boots. My laptop, which should never have had vista loaded on it, but came that way from the factory, took a solid 10 minutes to become usable from power on. This same computer took a solid 5 minutes to become usable after hibernation with vista. Under Ubuntu my computer is usable in well under two minutes from power off including me typing my user name and password. This is a good thing since Ubuntu really doesn't do sleep or hibernation very gracefully. On my laptop, networking never restarts upon resuming from sleep. Even with these problems, I will never go back to microsoft. Ubuntu runs so much faster. It breathed new life into my ancient e-machines computer which was an obsolete $400 on clearance including monitor, keyboard and speakers when I bought it 5 years ago. My dad got me a new computer for my birthday and my wife rightfully wanted to recycle / freecycle the old one. I thought it would be the perfect no risk way to try Ubuntu for a few days. It works so well now that she won't let me throw it away. Instead she bought a second computer desk and rearranged our living room so it would fit and the new computer sits next to the old one with the printer and networking between them. This from the woman who will recycle or freecycle anything and everything that even thinks of gathering dust in our apartment. I installed Ubuntu on the new computer too and it went very well. Ubuntu is much easier to use than Linux has been heretofore but its still not for the faint of heart. I have an associate's in electronics repair and used to do IC layout design using sun os, solaris, and hp-ux using mostly command line and some x-window until 2003 although I haven't done anything technical since then (wow its been 6 years) I'm not your average user either. When Ubuntu works, which is the vast majority of the time, my non techie 14 year old could install and does use it. When it didn't, I ended up taking the path of least resistance and reinstalling it and taking better notes the next time and restarting after each change of driver so if it broke at least I'd know what broke it. That is my final advice: back up often, take good notes, restart after each system change so you know if it works, Keep a sense of humour, and remember that you're getting a whole lot more than you paid for with Ubuntu.