ubuntu 8.04

As of right now, 16 days to go until the next version of Ubuntu linux is released.

I downloaded the beta this weekend and tried it out as a live cd for a little bit - seems very solid so far. Was responsive and good looking on my system.

Did not do a full-on install of it yet on my home PC, mainly since it is still running XP quite acceptably. Would be neat to dedicate an entire physical machine to it; but haven't really had a need to yet; my late 2005-vintage iBook is still running fine (although the battery is only good for ~30-40 minutes if wi-fi is on...

Regardless, pretty impressed with it.

If I only needed a PC for web, email, documents, pictures, & listening to mp3s, and watching movies/files that I had donwnloaded, or I needed to outfit a lot of people with PCs and I was on a budget, then I'd be pretty confident in choosing Ubuntu.

Not sure if it's ready for prime-time yet if you do a lot of PC gaming and like having the newest games to play, or if you're using your computer to make/record music, or if you are dependent on some proprietary application that only works on Windows.

The thought of "letting go" of being tied to proprietary software is pretty attractive, though a bit misleading. It's not as if by adopting an open-source only approach to things that somehow one's tech life will be free of complication or hassle. One still needs to do backups.

Regardless, I think more people being aware of the option and using it is a very good thing.