From time to time, someone in the Ubuntu community writes about the experience of introducing a “normal person” (someone who has no specific expertise with computers) to Ubuntu. These accounts provide useful feedback to Ubuntu designers and developers working to make Ubuntu easier to understand and use. They are no substitute for rigorous usability studies, but are nonetheless worthwhile.

I’m waiting a few hours at the Thompson Toyota, my Prius is getting some minor work done to it to pass state inspection, it still takes a few hours. They have a wireless connection to the Internet, but even though last time I connected without problems this time my PII Debian system was not happy. So I checked out the bank of beat up Gateways with vagabond keyboards in the corner.

For the past three versions of Ubuntu, I have tested seven news websites to find out if I could watch their video feeds using Ubuntu. You can read the results for 6.10 and 7.04, and 7.10. Each time, I was disappointed to learn that a majority of the video feeds did not play correctly on Ubuntu Linux. This time, however, something amazing has happened.

First a big thank you to the Ubuntu community for DONATING their time to put together such a fine Operating System. If you want to learn more about Ubuntu you can go to the following web site..

With Ubuntu 8.04 now on the streets, it’s time to catch a breather and reflect on just why Ubuntu gets all the hype. Why is Ubuntu the hottest brand in Linuxdom at this time? Why is it the distro most frequently advocated? I posed these questions to readers and LUG members; here’s the feedback from real-life Linux users.

For the last several years, Red Hat has been pushing forward the development of real-time enhancements for Linux. Yet the company has made no formal product announcement of how it would attempt to productize its real-time Linux innovations.

Love it or hate it, Ubuntu has changed the way Linux is perceived by many. A lot has changed since Warty Warthog, the first release, so we here at MakeTechEasier thought it was time to take a look at how Ubuntu has evolved over time with screenshots.

The real-time web is shaping up to be the next online revolution, and as we saw during our RealTime CrunchUp earlier this month, it’s already begun. But there are still some things that are holding us back — for one, many services still aren’t actually real time, they’re just something close to it.

Many Ubuntu users will find themselves needing help with their new OS. Many of them will turn to the Ubuntu forums, others will search the web, and then many will simply join the #ubuntu channel on irc.freenode.net. The #ubuntu channel is full of people, and you can get help for most of your...