Quote:I've been using linux for years now, I started off with Red Hat 5 and gradually learned more and more about linux, and in particular Fedora. Moving from Red Hat to Fedora was the right thing for me to do at the time, and I stayed with Fedora (FCR6) right up to the moment I started my 30 days with Ubuntu. I've also used a variety of other linux distros over the years including (but not limited to) Suse Linux Entreprise Desktop 10, Suse OSS 10 and Suse 9.3 Professional and I have used Smoothwall for years as my firewalls. 

Ubuntu, however never got much notice from me, sure I sent off for the free Ubuntu CD's and was impressed when a pack of 10 (Ubuntu 5.04) arrived in the post to me (including live CD and install CD in each pack), but truthfully, I never really bothered with Ubuntu as a distro, it just seemed 'too popular' and I was already more than happy with my chosen distro, Fedora so why change ?

 

Ubuntu's first release (October 20th, 2004) version 4.10, came at a time when Fedora Core release 2 was already out, and FCR3 was just about to be shipped. Amazingly though, through clever marketing and free (shipit) cd's (and of course 'word of mouth'), Ubuntu quickly became one of the most popular linux distros in no time at all, and the Ubuntu hype never subsided as anyone familiar with Digg/OSnews/Slashdot would know. It seemed to me that more and more linux users (or Windows switchers) were now starting off with (or switching to) Ubuntu, so it was time for me to put it through it's paces (for 30 days to get a real feel for the os) and see what all the fuss was about. Would this distro live up to the hype or not ? In the following six-part article, I hope to answer that question.