Nuke my Gentoo, Fedora for Ubuntu?

[Andreas Geske]

Hi List!

I'm still searching for my top Linux distro but still didn't find it. 
Tried SuSE, Gentoo, Fedora, Mandrake in different releases, but none of 
them fit my needs. Mandrake is a joke, SuSE and Fedora are sooooooo slow 
, and Gentoo, ... well ... nice piece of work, but still too much time 
consuming (compiling) and you need lots of knowledge to keep you system 
up and running.

Some time ago I read about Ubuntu Linux a heard lots of good things 
about it. But before I try it I have a few questions, maybe some of you 
are so kind to give me answers.

- How fast is Ubuntu compared to SuSE or Fedora. Mentioned distros are 
extremely slow on my PC (Athlon XP 1800+, 256 MB RAM). I know it's hard 
to measure, but maybe you can give me your personal "feeling" about the 
speed of Ubuntu Linux

- I'm one of these "bleeding edge guys". I want to have major version of 
software (e.g. Firefox 1.0) ASAP, that means 2 weeks after release. 
Ubuntu is based on Debian, which is not known as a "speed wonder".

- I don't like to search for third party packages throughout the whole 
web. Does Ubuntu Linux provide a reasonable software repository without 
having to edit yum.conf or other files where to pick up my packages. 
Maybe there's a list of packages supported out of the box.

- Even Ubuntu Linux is Gnome based distro there are two KDE apps I won't 
miss: K3B and Krename. Are these apps available? (Note: I don't need a 
fully featured KDE desktop, just these 2 apps)

- Can I use Ubuntu Linux as a server? Not for production use, just for 
private testing purposes. In other words: Does Ubuntu Linux provide 
packages for latest versions of: MySQL, PostgreSQL, qmail+additional 
packages, Python, Perl+additional packages, PHP, apache2?

- Due to Ubuntu being a Debian based distro, I assume the package format 
is DEB. Is there a graphical tool for installing software, like 
synaptic? (or even better)

- Does Ubuntu Linux provide goodies like
      - automatic hardware detection
      - autmounting CD-ROMs, digicams etc. (I love it to plug in my
        digicam and use it *without* having to mount it manually)
      - graphical configuration of the most important system settings
        like network, X11, printer, mount points, boot options etc.


Every answer is highly appreciated. Even a simple "yes" or "no" are 
valid responses for me :-)

Thank you in advance!

scsimodo