Pushed the new Linux distribution Ubuntu onto the test laptop here at the RedMonk home office. I’m impressed. Not impressed enough to swap out Gentoo for my production machine, but impressed. It’s a very solid all around distribution, and seems very well suited for laptops. It’s the first distro, for example, to pick up the Dell’s monitor properly without any additional X configuration – Fedora, Mandrake, SuSE and JDS (of course) all had trouble with it in the past. That said, the installer at least from a touchy-feely GUI perspective isn’t in the same class as, say, YAST, so it’s not perfect for the non-Linux user.
Also interesting with respect to Ubuntu is the complete GNOME 2.8 install, including Evolution 2.0. I’m still waiting for the latest and greatest GNOME to trickle down into Gentoo’s package support, but my initial experience with the Ubuntu version was very good.
Between Ubuntu and GNOME 2.8, I was able to remove the wireless NIC card in the machine, reinsert it, and have the network resume flawlessly. Very nice.
Anyhow, it’s early in the life of the latest Linux distro, but I like what I see thus far.
