Well, this has certainly been a fascinating thread to read.
I'm a long time Linux user who currently uses a Slackware 8 based system that I've manually updated over the past few years I've been running it at home. My first Linux distro was a Slackware 3.x distro that was floppy based (and I STILL have some of the old Slack floppies!
).
Anywho, I've been looking for a distro I could recommend to people currently running Windows who are frustrated with it. I've been using live CDs to "audition" various distros and I've had some interesting results. Ubuntu 'feels' pretty good as a distro and I've almost decided to make that the distro I recommend to people. I have Mandriva 10.1 (I believe, or at least it's a very recent release if not the current release) installed on a 80GB HDD just to see how it felt. It was ok but not something I would want to recommend to anyone.
Ubuntu's hardware detection is good, but not necessarily great. I say that since the live CDs I've played with (versions 5.04 and 5.10) have both not detected some integrated hardware devices (like NICs) on some PCs I've booted them on. Perhaps an actual installation would be different.
I've found the comments posted in this thread interesting since I always like to know what kinds of things people expect from Linux.
I've got no problem with people sticking with Windows instead of using Linux since Linux isn't for everyone.
It works well for me, which is why I continue to use it at home (on a PII 350MHz w/ 196MB of RAM). If Windows works for you, more power to ya.
I've had some very frustrating Linux experiences and extremely frustrating Windows experiences, so I can appreciate both sides of that argument. To the person who worked on the Windows XP box with no firewall and no anti-virus software, 7 viruses is nothing. I worked on a machine similar to what you described and found 897 objects of spyware in Ad-Aware, 440+ items in Spybot and as Spybot "tripped" over something, the anti-virus software I installed (I think I purchased Norton Anti-Virus for them) got invoked as it detected I forget how many viruses. That was quite the experience. After getting everything all cleaned up, the Windows box was fine. It's when I do these kinds of jobs that I boot my Linux live CD to see if Linux would run on the machine I'm working on.
Windows does "just work" but at a certain cost and a cost most are willing to pay. Nothing wrong with that.
To those having problems with gFTP, keep in mind these distros come with third-party apps and sometimes the distro maintainers will make source changes to the apps and sometimes they won't. So, gFTP problems won't necessarily be distro specific as much as they are gFTP specific. There was a version of gFTP that had a problem where a byte or two would NOT be transferred (either sent or received) resulting in corrupt files. I reported this to the author and he fixed the problem. I encountered this on my home machine that didn't come with gFTP and I built it from source.
For the other Slackware fans, I can understand your points about learning more about how the underlying OS works
but in this day and age I think computing trends are heading in the opposite direction.
Not having to know much about your computer (at least internals or underling OS) is the direction we're heading in. For the hobbyist who wants to learn that stuff, that's cool.. go for it. However, for those who don't care to know that stuff, the systems they use should "just work" as well. Windows isn't perfect in this regard but it's a good reference point since so many people are familiar with it.
As for my likes/dislikes about Ubuntu, overall I think it's a good distro. It's easy to use even though I would appreciate an improved wireless adapter configuration utility. I booted my Kubuntu live CD on a laptop I worked on earlier this week to diagnose a wireless networking problem and found I had to manually specify the SSID and passphrase to connect to an access point and I didn't know if WPA was supported or not, etc. I would have preferred a graphical "wizard" or something to walk me through configuring the wireless connection or at least show me which access points were in range. I was never able to get the Atheros 5100x (I forget the actual model) wireless adapter working. ath0 was listed as a device but I could not get it enabled. Maybe with an actual Unbuntu install (instead of using the live CD) that would have been different.
I do have a GOOD story about Ubunutu, though. I was working on a Dell Dimension 2350 system that had crashed. I re-installed a vanilla Windows XP Home Edition OS on the box since it was running XP before. Low and behold, after the first reboot after the install I had 640x480 video, no audio, and no Internet access since the NIC wasn't supported.
I had none of the Dell drivers.
So, I booted my Ubuntu CD and it detected the video card, audio card, and NIC and I was able to download XP drivers from Dell which I stored on my USB Zip drive that I brought with me. I then booted XP again and it DID provide USB support so I could install the drivers and get the system operational again. Ubuntu saved the day!
Oh yeah, one more thing before I close:
SMB <> Samba
Samba implements SMB, as others have already stated.
Peace...
