Jaunty has been a big improvement on my end, which now offers wireless drivers for my Asus Eee netbook. I've seen many issues with it, but I have nothing but Windows to compare it to and there's just no comparison. I wouldn't touch Windows anymore except I do a lot of video editing and I haven't successfully managed to do that in Ubuntu without video rendering issues. So I'm still partially married to Windows.

In terms of support, I've actually had good luck so far and really haven't needed forum support since you can find an answer that works just about every time with the use of Google.

I did appreciate your review though and if I get the chance, I might give another distro a try. I looked a Fedora and I still favored Ubuntu, but that's as far as I've gone.

Since this is Linux world, though, I can admit that Gentoo is cool but daunting for the beginner. It’s pretty much the problem with the entirety of Linux on the desktop.

Not to wax Apple fanboi over here, but in the 15 years Linux has been around, they’ve still failed at coming up with an OS that most anyone can sit down at and simply use. Apple (yes, and all their corporate moolah) threw together a bunch of old tech into a crucible and out pops OS X, a unix-based OS that solves so many problems that have plagued Linux for so long.

I can’t help but think that if there weren’t 300 different teams shooting for spin-offs or mulligans of the same old rubbish, we might have three really epic takes on the Linux flavor, any one of which might finally stand more than a snowball’s chance in hell at stealing significant desktop market share from Apple and Microsoft.

And the hardware thing…. FFS….. *EVERYONE* has Hauppauge PVR150s…. they were *THE* tuner card that you used for Linux and MythTV was basically designed around them……. while it’s true that my PVR150s are still working as far as recording I can’t get the damned IR blaster to work to save my life. In fact, I can’t get any of them to work….. I’ve spent time on google and finding many instructions for getting it to work with LIRC but whatever crap version of LIRC that is installed in MythBuntu now doesn’t fit what every other how-to does….. But people in the Ubuntu forums should know, right? Well apparently not….. I guess because I don’t have a huge desire to have huge HDTV screens and I really only care about simple TV then I am not worthy of their time.

But a side note…. Debian’s bug trackers and forums are just as evil….. sure linux is known to be “snobby” but my first step away from Madnriva was to Debian and it only took 3 visits to the forums before I was so pissed off that I decided never to run Debian again….. well, that is until now that Ubuntu is going the same way…… I also have to say that a lot of the stupid bull crap in Ubuntu is starting to creep up in Debian too….. I think the reason why it’s not noticed as much is because their release cycle is so slow. In fact, you can’t even use the new 3ware cards on a default Debian install because the kernel doesn’t support them….. but when we used a custom CD image with the latest kernel we gained that support but we lost support for other hardware we had. I think Ubuntu might be a glimpse into what Debian is ultimately becomming as well….

I might have to check out Arch….. The distro that I’m thinking I may dive into if I abandon all of debian is GenToo….. I’ve wanted to for a while but I’m just too lazy to learn….. but I have quite a few customers that are converting servers over to GenToo and at least half of everyone in my LUG prefers GenToo…. so there must be something to it :)