Ubuntu Linux

I downloaded, burnt and attempted to install Ubuntu Linux on my work desktop.

Low point - the current (preview) release (of Warty Warthog - 4.10 apparently) fails to install. Why? Because it can't install a certain package (intird-tools) because it's already installed. At that point, everything else fails.

OK, boot up LNX-BBC, chroot into the / directory and type "apt-get -f install". Marvellous. That's a debianism that came as a great surprise. Now I just need to write a grub.conf and grub-install it and I'll be back up and running.

Felt very pissed off having to leave work before I got it running, but I'm sure it'll be fine within a few minutes of arriving on Monday.

So, Ubuntu looks promising, and understanding Debian better will make me feel like a more rounded person. Plus, I've never really wanted to touch Debian on x86 before because of the lack of "currentness" - Ubuntu comes with GNOME 2.8 which is only available for Gentoo 2004.2 and Fedora Core 2.91 at the moment...

And another thing, I do realise that there are now a plethora of distros out there (and that's another rant altogether), but it should be noted that Mark Shuttleworth is behind Ubuntu, which can only mean one thing - future success. Here, at last is a new distro that aims high with decent financial backing. Red Hat and Novell/SUSE had better watch out. There's a new kid in town.