Ubuntu is a desktop-oriented Linux distribution and complete Linux-based operating system based on Debian GNU/Linux which is freely available and downloadable. The special feature of Ubuntu is its focus on usability, including the widespread use of the sudo tool for administrative tasks. Ubuntu 6.06 with codename “Dapper Drake” was released on June 1, 2006, and included GNOME 2.14 (or KDE 3.5.2 in Kubuntu), Mozilla Firefox 1.5.0.3, OpenOffice 2.0.2, Xorg 7.0, GCC 4.0.3, and version 2.6.15 of the Linux kernel at release time.

Ubuntu

FOXNews reviews Ubuntu 6.06 and concludes that “Canonical’s Ubuntu 6.06 LTS is an excellent Linux-based operating system, so excellent, in fact, that it not only earned eWEEK Labs’ Analyst’s Choice designation but has also become our clear favorite among Linux desktop distributions.” Ubuntu also been tested and installed with the x86 desktop version on an IBM Thinkpad T41 and an Althon64 system that custome built. Server version of Ubuntu was put through its paces in a VMware virtual machine, and fount that hardware configuration tasks in Ubuntu rather straightforward, requiring less fiddling than other Linux distributions.

Update: Ubuntu 6.10