Ubuntu: First Impressions

So I finally bit the bullet and tried Ubuntu Linux on my laptop.

It took me six hours to download. After a bit of trouble with the first CD burn, the second started right up. I played a bit with it and decided... wtf, I can re-install Win98 in a half hour or so. Let's try it.

It installed easily and in my playing with it thus far I'm impressed.

The most impressive part was when I decided to see if I could get online with it. I plugged in the PCMCIA ethernet card, plugged in one of the extra ethernet cords we have hanging about and fired up the pre-installed version of FireFox.

I get a local html file... "Welcome to Ubuntu". So I type in Yahoo's address and boom. I'm there. Absolutely no settings to tweak. I'm just online. Yep, I'm entering this one from the laptop.

And it recognizes the Windows-based LAN with no problems either. It immediately located it and let me log onto shares on both our other machines.

So far the only issue I see is that the little font chooser here in the blogger editor doesn't seem to work well. Oh, and it doesn't seem to see the PS2 mouse so I'm having to use the nasty little "scratch pad" mouse. Feh! I'll be searching the help files on that one.

More reports coming. Next: The dreaded WiFi test.