So a couple weeks ago I decided to do a little system administration and configure a spare computer with a desktop Linux distribution. Yeah, it was a great way to spend a Sat afternoon I went with the Ubuntu because it’s been getting some good reviews lately, and also because my coworker Jake had said some good things about it. Which is strange, because I normally don’t trust anything he says… ¹

When I tried to install Linux even just a year or so ago, it was a very time consuming process because very often I would have to tweak or configure some random hardware setting. That may be fine for a server setup, but for a desktop, it really just needs to go. And that is exactly what happened. The whole install process was surprisingly easy, going from nothing to a working desktop configuration probably only took all of 20 minutes. I didn’t have to setup or configure anything, it auto detected all the hardware automatically and even installed a bunch of useful programs automatically, including Open Office. The only slight difficulty I encountered was setting the correct timezone, since it didn’t have Washington DC listed for whatever reason.

So if you’ve got some spare computers lying, and want to use it to browse the web and do some simple word processing, I would highly recommend giving Ubuntu a try. And if you don’t have a CD burner, you can even get a CD with everything you need to get started shipped to you for free. That’s pretty cool

¹ j/k

PS, Would you believe it if I told you I actually cooked something? I heart curry…