The most popular of the free Linux distros, the latest release of Ubuntu Linux 9.04, termed Jaunty Jackalope is available for both servers and desktops. Both commercial & free download is available, suitable choice I made was 32-bit desktop edition on a 699MB ISO CD image.

Once I downloaded this, I created a Live CD disk from which it is possible to evaluate Ubuntu without having to make any changes to the host computer. Works just fine, the Ubuntu installer configures the display correctly and also successfully deployed the built-in WiFi adapter.

Once you successfully have booted the LiveCD, it feels just like running Ubuntu normally, only files have to be called from the CD, so made it a lot slower. Installation is piece of cake, the software on disk flows in a graphical navigation and we can safely call this a very easy to follow setup program.

The default desktop manager is Gnome (2.26) which is graphically rich like Windows with enhanced multi-monitor support. The usual tools are there, with exciting add on support for additional 3D graphical effects, which can be attributed to Compiz Fusion.

Firefox 3.0 is the default browser, flash and a number of other necessary plug ins are readily available to be installed to support all the multimedia you need.

Java, however, was not pre-loaded although Firefox offered to download and install a choice of Java plug-ins for us, so there were no real issues there either.

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