I love tinkering with Linux, and the new Ubuntu 8.04 is unparalleled. I am running the new Ubuntu on my laptop as I write this blog post. Linux has come such a long way, and Ubuntu is the easiest distro to install and use. This new release of Ubuntu has some groundbreaking features.

The coolest thing about Ubuntu 8 is that you can install it from inside Windows with the new Wubi installer! I tried this method of install, and it worked flawlessly. I can’t tell you how much better this is compared to partitioning your hard drive. That said, I have never had a problem with Ubuntu installing the “old way” where it partitioned my drive on its own. Not everyone is going to have Windows installed, but if you do, the Wubi installer is the easiest way to go.

Ubuntu immediately found my WPA-protected wireless network and communicated flawlessly. In the past, I’d often had issues with wireless cards and Linux. I was pleased to see this work right out of the box. Once online, I checked for updates. Ubunu 8.04 has only been out for a few weeks, but there were already 78 updates to download. Holy cow.

Ubuntu 8 has cured another of my Linux pains in the simple way that it downloads extras such as Flash Player, Java, and proprietary graphics drivers. While browsing with Firefox, I went to a Flash site and it told me I needed to install plugins. I did so within Firefox (as you would with Windows) and it worked perfectly! This is the first time I have seen that work properly. Ditto for Java. It installed the same way.

I looked in the Hardware Drivers settings of the OS to find that 3D acceleration was not enabled for my ATI graphics card. When I clicked the box to turn it on, it immediately prompted me to download the necessary proprietary drivers. This was painless. After a reboot, I enabled the desktop effects. I didn’t turn the effects on full blast, but chose the light setting. Every so often, the effects have been little choppy, but they are nice overall. The chopping only occurs when restoring a minimized window, I should add. Overall, the smoothness of the desktop effects will depend on your computer hardware.

I’m not crazy about the fact that Ubuntu chose Firefox 3 beta 5 as the default browser for this release. I wish they would have stuck with version 2 for now. Perhaps that is because Ubuntu 8 is a long-term-support release and it seems foolish to have a beta browser as the default. That said, I’ve had no negative issues with Firefox 3b5. Foxmarks, one of my favorite extensions for Firefox, does not yet have a version compatible with Firefox 3, so I couldn’t sync my bookmarks as I normally would. That will be resolved in time. For now, I had to manually import my bookmarks.html file from my other computer.

In the past, when installing Ubuntu on a separate partition alongside Windows, it would automatically mount my Windows NTFS drive partition. This was not the case this time. Perhaps it is due to the Wubi installer and how I chose to install Linux. I could probably get this working, but I don’t really care to at the moment. I thought it was worth noting that it didn’t do this automatically on my machine, as I would have expected. Your results may vary.

I wish that the folks at Ubuntu would create a more attractive default theme for the OS. While the orange and brown look isn’t terrible, it could be a lot prettier than it is. Still, you can change themes in the system preferences. There are some subtle new visual pleasantries in this Ubuntu release, such as the selected text box on your page has a highlighted glow, as one example.

I have read some complaints about the implementation of PulseAudio within Ubuntu 8, but I don’t know enough about that to comment. I’m not entirely certain what those issues are about, and they haven’t affected me. If that is something that concerns you, know that rumor has it that Ubuntu is going to eventually release version 8.04.1 with fixes for PulseAudio. Perhaps in that release, Firefox 3 will be finalized as well.

If you are interested in Linux, Ubuntu 8 is the one to try. I have had no problems at all, and haven’t once had to resort to the command line to get something done. Hooray! I’d suggest booting to the live CD to check that your Internet connection is going to work before you install it outright. If you use an Ethernet cable, you shouldn’t have anything to worry about.

As a footnote, I should mention that Fedora has just released version 9 of its Linux distro, which graphically has the prettiest interface, in my opinion. Also, OpenSuse will release version 11 of their distro in about a month. I have found past versions of Fedora and Suse to be a little harder to manage (espeically Fedora), so I have decided to stick with Ubuntu, for simplicity and ease.