This isn’t so much a review, just a rambling discussion on what comes to mind for me about Ubuntu after using it on my laptop for three months or so. I decided against writing a conventional “review” of Ubuntu… seems like there are enough of those, so I don’t see the value of it.

But I do see some value in a rambling discussion on the subject, so here goes.

A technology revolution started today. Most people don’t know about it. In fact, most folks won’t hear about today’s events for another five to seven years. But circle April 24, 2008 on your calendar. A decade from now, historians will say today was the day Ubuntu Linux reached its tipping point — especially on servers. Here are five reasons why.

I’ve been taking the train to work for 4 years now. It’s a 45 minute rambling ride in which I usually either read a book, sleep, or grab my laptop loaded up with Ubuntu and get some stuff done. Over time, I’ve collected a few funny remarks I’ve either over heard, or that people have said directly to me. Here are the 10 best.

Matija Šukle writes: "Exactly three months ago I wrote that I'm migrating to XMPP/Jabber and slowly leaving all proprietary IM protocols. In that blog post is also an example message I'm leaving my contacts why I'm doing it."

Two years ago, while working on awesome, I joined the Freedesktop initiative to work on XCB. I had to learn the arcane of the X11 protocol and all the mysterious and old world that goes with it.

At the risk of sounding naive, I'm concerned about how members of the free and open source software (FOSS) community treat each other. No doubt in most parts of the community, people are getting things done while keeping civil. But, publicly, or when the big issues are raised, a sustained nastiness has crept into discussions over the last year or so.

Last week I read a half-witted blog post citing “3 Reasons why we shouldn’t use Linux”.

TechBirdy’s reasons are either born out of complete ignorance, or from a desire to spread pure FUD.

Being a Linux user, I thought: what are some good reasons to not use Linux? The following are the best reasons I could come up with.

Last week my colleague Rikki Kite wrote a good blog entry on how to gracefully introduce a person to Linux. I would like to add a few more pointers to her excellent “moving” blog entry:

Mandriva, previously known as Mandrake, was always an interesting mainline GNU/Linux distribution to use, providing some superb server or desktop software. As far as quality is concerned, nothing much has changed since the Nineties, but as far as sophistication of the desktop is concerned, things have come a long way from those dark days.