Apps installed appear to include the equivalent of Cygwin.
I did this about a week ago (had to see what all the hype was about). I have to say, I prefer Knoppix/Gnoppix/Monoppix. They just have more of the apps i want to play with pre-installed and easily accessible from the programs menu.
I wrote about Unbuntu a new Linux distro from Mark Shutleworth over at Between the Lines a few days ago and pointed to some things Doc Searls is saying about it. This morning, Sam Ruby posted about getting Ubuntu......
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Ubuntu seems to hit the sweet spot for usable Linux Distros; it’s got the basic tools (quite a bit more than the basics if you are at all proficient with python). And, a fair amount of attention has been paid to getting it all to work together as a system rather than treating it as a set of components flying in close formation. It may not have the slickest of interfaces, or be the most cutting edge graphical environment, but when it comes to having the basic productivity and manipulation tools, it’s better than most windows installs I’ve seen recently. It’s the first Linux distribution where I’ve been comfortable recommending it to non-technical people.
On the hardcore side, I’m using gentoo-ppc in my powerbook. I would not recommend it to non-techies, but it is great to be at the bleeding edge, specially as support for powerpc is far from perfect in linux.
Linux in powerpc is getting there, and you have the extra benefit that nobody ported Flash or java plugin to this architecture, so you don’t “enjoy” most stupid ads done in java. MacOnLinux runs jaguar faster than native here, and it offers an alternative for when I need one of those silly things (for instance, Spanish tax forms can only be filled using the Acrobat reader, as they have javascript to generate the UID. No free PDF reader processes scripts, AFAIK.
After seeing Russell rave about Ubuntu I grabbed a copy of the live CD and tried it out on my Sony laptop, I figured that would stretch its legs, but it handled it fine, the display came up at the right rez, the wireless networking worked fine as did the sounds, color me impressed. I see Sam had a similar experience with his T40. Now I’m torn, do I goto Ubuntu, or get that Mac Mini I was thinking about ? Ubuntu is certainly the slickest trouble free Linux distro I’ve seen yet....
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Also a relief was upgrading from Warty to Hoary. It just worked. Took about 1.5 hours, I guess, to download and install all the updated packages. Reboot and I’m on Hoary. Nothing more to it.
Think they’re also being smart, compared to Debian, about offering near-to-latest versions of popular platforms like Python and PHP.
Wow, they have torrents, too! And a PPC Live CD! This rocks! I’ve heard a lot of hype, but I’m downloading this thing right now! I can’t wait to see my lovely little iBook booting a live Linux CD! Not that I dislike OS X, but it will be nice to have that other option from time to time. :D
Jonas: one of the first things I install on any windows desktop or laptop is Cygwin. It contains ports of a number of “must have” GNU utilities, like ssh and vim.
One thing that the Ubuntu live CD doesn’t do is automatically mount your windows partition so that you can access your files. Knoppix does this [1]. It also had trouble recognising the network at work, but then I don’t blame it ;-)
The only major problems I’ve encountered running Ubuntu on a laptop is that it doesn’t handle putting the laptop to sleep when you close the lid. This is actually a Linux kernel issue, since it still has issues with ACPI.
There’s another problem with Ubuntu that also plagues desktop users: if one app is using the soundcard, none of the others can use it at the same time. Consequently, if you have Esound running to handle Gnome sound effects then you can’t use Muine to play music :-(
Lots of people seem to be very impressed with Ubuntu, the slick new Linux distro based on Debian, running Gnome. Even my friend and colleague Piers has been bitten by the bug. To provide balance for all the good press......