What the heck is an Ubuntu?
Posted on November 26, 2005
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Been hearing a lot of buzz about Ubuntu lately. By all that I’ve read, it is an intriguing linux distro (distribution), so today I took some time to download the iso for it and install it into a clean virtual machine to give it a look. The curiosity finally got to me.
First Impression: WoW
The install fits on one CD. A bit different than normal these days… After blinking at the screen for a minute, I fired up my trusty bittorrent client and pulled down the CD and prepared for the install. Which was by far the most painless linux install I’ve ever done. Now I have to agree with many and assorted linux fans and point out the reviewing a linux installation is just about worthless — hell, you install it once. You *use* it daily, after all. But wow! It really was a simple install. Mixed blessing, but if you want more installed, one can likley make the assumption that you know enough to know what you want and will enjoy the Synaptic Package Manager. Which worked very well for me when i needed to add Make, for instance.
One odd thing that I just thought of. As near as I can tell, I sure don’t recall setting a root password when I did the install. And all the maintenance I’ve done so far has been via sudo. Hmm… I need to remember to look into that a bit more. [later: ah ha. question answered].
Every linux distribution has a “feel” to it. Some feel “blah”, others feel “snappy”. Some feel “stodgy” and others just try too hard to be “slick”. For instance, I’ve been using CentOS a lot this past year or so. Now, i like CentOS a lot for many reasons, but it always feels “stodgy” to me. Gives you that “banker in a 3 piece suite” impression. Not that there’s anything wrong with that… Ubuntu truly feels slick the first time you fire it up. Everything about it looks, imho, nice and polished. Nothing seems bolted on and, visually, it all just works nicely.
Once I was done ooh’ing and ahh’ing at the pretty interface (gnome too - yay!), the little update manager thingy started blinking. I didn’t pay much attention there, but I can tell you there were some updates/patches to be fetched. It fetched ‘em and installed ‘em all quite transparently. Pretty similar to what I’m used to with up2date from the RH/CentOS world I reckon.
OpenOffice.org is bundled into the base install, which is a nice plus. As if Firefox! Finally, a distro that doesn’t default to Mozilla! 
In fact, so far everything I’ve looked for or expected has been there. Now granted, I’ve only used it for a few hours so far… but heck, even a Terminal Services client was installed!
I went into “Settings - System Admin - Shared Folders” and was promptly notified that I was going to have to install some more software if I really wanted to share anything. Followd the prompts and had Samba installed for Windows sharing 30 seconds later. Now that’s just darned friendly. (to be fair, I’ve not quite found anything “friendly” to configure Samba itself yet…)
So, I’ve got a lot of poking, prodding and just general using to do yet, but my first and second impressions are still a solid “Wow.” I’ve been toying with going back to full-time linux on my home machine (again) and this is, so far, looking like a strong candidate.
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Visited any security scanning sites to see how secure the default installation is? I wouldn’t have a clue what services etc. to shut down or even how to do it if I knew so I’d be happier if it were pretty airtight. Any info would be appreciated.
OH! And which distro did you go? Dapper Drake 6.05 or Breezy Badger 5.10?
Sorry. I’m not spamming you. I just clicke “Ubuntu” above to get the Ubuntu category and it was a bit dodgy. The white didn’t run all the way down the post and I couldn’t read the black text on the green background. I noticed a Lazarus Long quote. Cheers for that! That I haven’t seen anywhere else on your site yet, but I typically only visit the front page and the Toolkit page so that’s not surprising really.
Went with Breezy Badger 5.10. Haven’t scanned yet, but did notice an excess of services. Need to revisit that soon — don’t have it running right now, but recall a “services” type control panel that probably needs some attention (blue tooth ain’t too useful in my house, for instance).
And yeah, my themes struggle a bit when you try and use the category filters. Something to fix. Someday.
Oh yeah, the quote thing - should be a random quote over there in the sidebar on most pages. Added it a few days ago.