Ubuntu Linux - 700MB

Ubuntu's installer is not going to win any beauty contests: It runs in text mode and completely ignores your mouse. It is also not the "fire it up and watch it go" experience you get with newbie-friendly commercial Linux distributions such as Xandros or Linspire.

I've been through several Ubuntu installations now, and find that I usually have to answer somewhere around a dozen questions before the installer kicks into autopilot and does its thing. None of these are the sort of questions that used to make Linux installs a nightmare: You won't need to know the timings of your video card, for instance. If you're setting up a dual-booting machine, you will need some basic knowledge of partitioning, and Ubuntu can help you shrink a Windows partition to make room on your drive. Once the installer is finished interacting with you, it starts copying files to disk, rebooting once in the process. Then you'll see your new Ubuntu log-in screen.

Once you log in, you're presented with a very clean Gnome 2.10 desktop. By default, all system icons like Computer and Home live in a Places menu at the top of the screen, leaving the desktop itself empty. Even the Trash is not on the desktop--instead it's an applet on the Gnome panel. I think this approach is mindful of the way most users use their desktop: as a place to stash work-in-progress. It's wise, then, to clear the desktop so the only items on it are files and folders that users put there.

Ubuntu's Applications menu (Windows users, think "Start menu") is very well organized--which is good, because there's no built-in way to edit the menu. This turns out to be a limitation of Gnome 2.10, and a lot of users aren't happy about it. I don't understand the gripes myself, but that's because I always put launcher buttons for the apps I use most frequently right onto my panel. If you prefer to launch your apps by pulling down a menu and looking through submenus, do yourself a favor and download the nascent Menu Editor application, which lets you set things up just the way you like.
An Entire World of Free Software

Ubuntu is based on Debian, the grandpappy of noncommercial Linuxes, and thus inherits Debian's best-of-breed package management system, Apt. You can deal with Apt via the command line or the powerful point-and-click Synaptic interface. The amount of software available is staggering. We're talking about more than 16,000 different packages, once you've enabled all the official repositories. Granted, a lot of these packages are extremely esoteric; for example, I was thrilled to find the latest version of Trn, a venerable Usenet reader that Perl creator Larry Wall first brought to life more than two decades ago. Others are simply fantastic apps that are not installed by default. If you're a software junkie, you'll have a blast browsing through the listings in Synaptic and trying out apps left and right. To access these goodies, follow the instructions at Ubuntuguide.org for adding the "universe" and "multiverse" repositories to your Apt setup.

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