Nuke my Gentoo, Fedora for Ubuntu?

[Matt Zimmerman]

On Fri, Dec 03, 2004 at 01:05:48AM +0000, Andreas Geske wrote:

> - 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".

Debian generally receives new upstream releases rather quickly in the
development branch in fact; its reputation is for infrequent stable
releases.

Ubuntu receives the updates from Debian unstable on a daily basis, except
during our freeze, when these updates must be approved manually if needed
for the Ubuntu release.

> - 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.

Ubuntu includes all of the software in Debian, and quite a bit more as well.
It is possibly the largest collection of packaged free software available in
one place.

> - 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)

k3b is available; I am not familiar with krename.

> - 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?

Absolutely.

> - 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)

Synaptic is the standard graphical interface for package management in
Ubuntu.

> - Does Ubuntu Linux provide goodies like
>      - automatic hardware detection

Yes.

>      - autmounting CD-ROMs, digicams etc. (I love it to plug in my
>        digicam and use it *without* having to mount it manually)

Yes.

>      - graphical configuration of the most important system settings
>        like network, X11, printer, mount points, boot options etc.

There are graphical tools for network and printer configuration.  I'm not
sure what you're looking for in "mount points"; there is a graphical
configurator for automatic mounting preferences, but not for editing
/etc/fstab.

-- 
 - mdz