Ubuntu is a community developed operating system that is perfect for laptops, desktops and servers. Whether you use it at home, at school or at work Ubuntu contains all the applications you’ll ever need, from word processing and email applications, to web server software and programming tools. Ubuntu is and always will be free of charge. You do not pay any licensing fees. You can download, use and share Ubuntu with your friends, family, school or business for absolutely nothing.
Origin - Home Page: Isle of Man - Ubuntu
Desktop: Gnome
Price: Free and Open Source
LVM Support: Not in the version with a GUI installer, but LVM is supported in the text-based installer version. Click here to find out why we think Logical Volume Management (LVM) is important for a desktop or server.
Comments:The version of Ubuntu used for this post is the one with a GUI installer (I guess it’s intended for noobs). The other installer version is text-based, and has more features for experts to tweak. The GUI installation is pretty easy, with very little options for customization. All connected hardware were detected and configured, including the wireless PCI network card. After installation, I plugged in a Belkin wireless USB card, and it too was detected and working with no manual configuration needed.
Insert an audio CD, and Rythmbox (the installed audio player) pops up with all the tracks loads and ready. Inserting a DVD video is a different story. The plugins needed for Totem - the installed movie player - to play commercial DVD videos are not installed. However, a wizard pops up that informs you that it will install the “ugly” set of GStreamer plugins if it’s okay with you. Once installed, you’ll discover that the plugins will not play encrypted DVD videos.
That is because libdvdcss, the library needed for encrypted DVD playback, is not installed. You will have to find and manually add a repository that contains libdvdcss if you intend to play encrypted DVD videos. This is one area where openSUSE has Ubuntu beat. Like Ubuntu, openSUSE does not ship with libdvdcss, but the Pacman and Videolan repositories, which contain libdvdcss, are listed in the openSUSE Control Center.
Firefox is the only Web browser installed, but it lacks the plugins to play media files embbeded in Web pages. You will not, for example, be able to play those flash videos on Youtube or any quicktime files. Those plugins will have to be installed by you.
Firewall, where is an integrated firewall? One of the very first things I look for in a Linux or BSD distro is an integrated firewall - enabled out-of-the-box. None exist for Ubuntu, or perhaps it is hidden and I just could not find it. I’m still looking for it, and I’ll update this page with the results of my search. By comparison, openSUSE, Mandriva, and Parsix all have a firewall enabled during installation, with a GUI interface for it in their respective Control Centers.
Download/Buy: The latest stable version is Ubuntu-8.04. You may download DVD or CD iso images, buy DVD or CD install media, or request a free CD from this link. Install images are available for x86 and 64-bit Intel and AMD architectures.
