Ubuntu 8.10I’ve been using Ubuntu 8.04 LTS on my personal laptop for sometime, I also have a 9″ Dell Netbook which is running a remix version of Ubuntu. I’m primarily a Windows user, but over the last couple of years I’ve used Linux on and off generally because it looks nice and costs nothing. I’m writing this blog entry because I’ve just upgraded my Dell laptop to Ubuntu 8.10 and I’m astounded.

With Ubuntu 8.10, they’ve made a fantastic operating system. This is coming from a Windows Professional. The upgrade from 8.04 to 8.10 was seamless and instantly the new Ubuntu 8.10 came to life, correcting its own upgrade issues and cleaning up files. It even indicated to me that some icons had changed in the upgrade and where I could find them in 8.10 . Ubuntu 8.10 even includes a fix allowing <h> tags to finally display properly in Firefox. Browsing is now very very smart.

I also noticed that now my WiFi connection LED flashes on and off when it’s transceiving data. This is a smart and useful feature which was never available when my Dell laptop was under the control of Microsoft Windows XP (which apparently it was designed for).

Is it that Ubuntu 8.10 is actually controlling my laptop’s hardware better than Windows? With Ubuntu 8.10 I can use Remote Desktop to communicate with my Windows terminals, connect to my office via a VPN and I can even use Outlook Web Access inside Linux’s Evolution mail client.

Enough said, see for yourself: Download and try Ubuntu on a LIVE CD