Wired – Ubuntu 7.1 is certainly easier to install and set up than Windows Vista, and it’s very close to matching Mac OS X when it comes to making things “just work” out of the box. Wi-Fi, printing, my digital camera and even my iPod all worked immediately after installation — no drivers or other software required.
Ubuntu 7.1 ships as a “live CD,” which means you can boot from your DVD drive and test Ubuntu without touching your existing system. If you choose to dual boot Ubuntu with Windows, you can tell Ubuntu to import all your settings and files. This is what most new Ubuntu users will be doing, so I tried it. Including the importing, installation took under 20 minutes.
If you’ve been considering making the switch from Windows or Mac, Ubuntu makes the process painless. It’s ability to seamlessly import your settings, music and data from a Windows partition erases one of the most pressing barriers for new users. And once you’re in, the learning curve is minimal. In fact, besides requiring a little futzing to get multimedia playback set up, Gutsy Gibbon is about as easy as Linux gets. Link.
Find this article at: http://www.labnol.org/software/download/comparison-review-ubuntu-linux/1579/
Reader Comments
The version number is ‘7.10′, not 7.1. It’s that way because Ubuntu releases are versioned after the month and year of release. This latest one has come out in October of 2007, hence the ‘10′ and ‘7′. If you say ‘7.1′, you’re referring to the release of January of 2007, which isn’t what ‘Gutsy Gibbon’ is.
Besides, the Wired reviewer has wrote nothing about the out-of-the-box Windows (NTFS) read and write feature of 7.10, which is one of its biggest. The previous versions allowed read-only mounting of Windows NTFS drives, so this is a huge thing.
Now if only all the fat pipers would leave the FTPs, I’d like to finish the download on my measly 256k connection! Thank you!
Written by Aalaap on 10.19.07