Linux Tavern

I’ve been hearing alot of good things about Ubuntu Linux lately. Everything from a simple install, good hardware support, and that it is a stable Debian based distribution have made me think about trying Ubuntu out. Finally, yesterday I decided it was time. So I went to the Ubuntu Website and was pleasantly surprised to find a download link that actually took me to a download page where I found links to download the ISO of the most current version of Ubuntu Linux, which is version 5.10.

After about 20 minutes, I had my nice Ubuntu ISO image (A 6MB Cable Internet Connection is great for this — if you have the means, I highly recommend it!). I then fired up VMware (I’m not quite ready to switch — yet) and created a new Virtual Machine for a Linux Distribution of type “Other” based on a 2.6 Kernel. Next I pointed the virtual machine cdrom to the Ubuntu ISO image and turned on the virtual machine to start the installation.

Ubuntu Installation - Not pretty, but simple

At first, I was a little surprised not to see a GUI based installer. It seems that’s the latest craze among all the distributions, but not Ubuntu. I was even a little worried at this point — it looks like Debian and unfortunately my past experiences with Debian installs and hardware detection have not been the best. But as I moved through the Install, I realized that while this may not be the prettiest install I have ever seen, I think it is the easiest. All I had to do was select my language and keyboard (which were automatically detected correctly) and let the installer erase my hard drive and do what it wanted with it and then just sit back and relax. The installer proceeded to automatically detect all the hardware, copy everything needed for the install off of the cd, and install the base system.

After the base system was installed (about 30 minutes under VMware), the installer informed me that the first phase of the install was done and that the system would be rebooted and the install would be finished after the reboot. After the reboot, the installer proceeded to install the rest of the system packages and then asked me to select the screen resolutions for the X server. It had already chosen the resolutions that are compatible with my screen and driver and I just confirmed this and that was it! This part of the install really surprised me — with every other Linux install I have done, the most troublesome part of the install has been the detection and install of the correct X Server and Driver. Ubuntu appears to have done this automatically and correctly without any input from me — although we haven’t started X yet. The only thing left to do was create a user to login with (no setting the root user password — more about this later) and then just wait for the bootloader to be installed. Again I was surprised that I wasn’t asked about the bootloader — it just installed grub, no questions asked and no problems.

Ubuntu Linux definitely has the simplest and easiest installer I have ever used for any operating system — not just Linux Distributions! But it still remains to be seen whether it actually detected all my hardware correctly — so on to the test — the first boot.

Ubuntu Linux - The First Boot

After the install finished, the system rebooted and it was time to test the install. At first, I was presented with a login screen. So I logged in with the username and password I created during the install and I was taken to a blank GNOME desktop. I like the clean desktop. No useless icons on the desktop linking to the Ubuntu homepage (I downloaded your OS — I think I know where your website is!) or some support site I’ll never use. Not even links to the home directory — just a nice blank slate to work with and some menus to get me started. As I started to use the system, I found that all my hardware was detected and the correct drivers were loaded! Even sound and the scroll wheel on my mouse worked — this is another first that has never worked for me before without some manual configuration.

I’ve only been using Ubuntu for about a day now, but so far it has exceeded my expectations. The only thing that really confused me a little at first was not using the root user at all. In the past I have become accustomed to using su to perform root tasks and Ubuntu (correctly) tries to keep the user from doing this and suggests using sudo instead. I’m sure this is a good idea (especially for security), it will just take me a while to get used to it. Other than that, I like Ubuntu alot — it is very Mac like (that’s a positive thing in my book) and, so far, it just works. After I’ve been using it for a while, I’ll post a more complete review of Ubuntu, but for now I’m seriously considering switching to Ubuntu.

Technorati Tags: Linux, Ubuntu, VMware

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 1st, 2005 at 2:55 pm and is filed under Linux Distributions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.