Some time ago, I wanted to install Ubuntu. When I found a site with the
download capability, I discovered they would optionally send me the
installation CDs, free, if I would accept a large enough number of them
to make economic sense for them. Today I received my package of three
sets of CDs: one for regular PCs; one for 64-bit PCs; and one for Macs.
Each set contained an install CD and a live CD, the latter to load
directly from the CD without installing (so you can try it out
harmlessly).

My Toy computer uses removable hard drives. I had a 120 GiB drive whose
content, flawed, was done better on another drive, so I put it in the
machine, loaded the install CD and started. A base Debian Linux system
installed, then extra software installed and the installer asked me to
name a user, with password. I then removed the install CD and rebooted.

I wasn't done with installation of the system. What got installed next
was a set of programs downloaded from one of the Ubuntu mirror sites. A
number of sites are available, ready to go, with no additional work
necessary on my part. After the new set of programs was installed, the
system offered to update everything that wasn't up to date. I told it
to do so, and it did ... painlessly.

For the last several years, I've used the KDE windowing system. The
default windowing system for Ubuntu is Gnome but there is a KDE version
available, Kubuntu, that is maintained in parallel with Ubuntu. The
last time I attempted to use Gnome, it was less than satisfactory. But
that was several years ago and things have improved.

Apart from selecting my user name and password, the only configuration
I, as a user, was involved in was to select my time zone. Everything
else was done for me automatically.

The default browser is Firefox, which is my preferred browser now. I've
been using it since its early release and am happier with it than with
its brother product, the Thunderbird email program, which won't allow
me to make LiveJournal updates from within a message, as I have been
able to do using the Mozilla email client.

There is little more to say. I installed Ubuntu and it seems to work. I'll play with it for the next few weeks, to be sure.

I do miss having root access. The first Linux I installed and got
working was a package at version 0.81, a beta release that included a
Linux encyclopedia that proved both necessary and very valuable. That
early installation took weeks of study, trial-and-error and
frustration. And it did take weeks to get it running, instead of a few
minutes. But then, I was installing from a collection of diskettes, not
from a mix of a CD and a high-speed Internet connection. As I recall,
it took me over a year of research and experimentation before I
discovered the secrets that would allow me to use my printer.

Times have changed. After that first successful installation, I've used
Slackware, Red Hat, Mandrake (now Mandriva, but I haven't used it since
before they changed the name), SuSe, Linspire (another Debian,
originally named Lindows and about to be renamed Freespire), a hacker's
release whose name I don't recall and a few small versions, most
notably Knoppix, that would load from a single diskette or memory
stick, super-valuable for diagnosing a flaky system. Tomorrow, who
knows: there are hundreds of Linux releases out there.

If Ubuntu works out, I may drop Linspire in its favor. Otherwise, I may move on to Fedora Core 5 (FC5).