I've been using Ubuntu Linux 11.04 in VirtualBox solely for learning Ruby on Rails. (For those of you who haven't tried it, Ruby on Rails is EXTREMELY finicky, and the version, OS, etc. need to be just right. The book _Agile Development With Rails_ has installation instructions for Ubuntu but not for other distros.) I've heard people complain about the new Unity interface in Ubuntu and say that GNOME was so much better. In my case, Unity didn't work with VirtualBox, so Ubuntu automatically switched to GNOME. I'm pretty sure that there must be an easy way for people to manually switch from Unity to GNOME when installing Ubuntu. I'll bet that FreeGeek (which installs Ubuntu on donated computers) is looking into this. My only complaints about Ubuntu 11.04 are its relatively slow operation (even with 2 GB of RAM) and the LONG time needed to install. Yes, this does remind me of a certain OS from a Redmond software company. In defense of Ubuntu, I've been spoiled by antiX Linux, Puppy Linux, and Swift Linux. It's amazing how using Linux (and especially lightweight distros) has conditioned me to expect an OS to install in just a few minutes and to get speeding tickets. I still think Ubuntu is a good OS. Although I gripe about the long installation time, at least it didn't require my constant attention like the installation of a certain OS from Redmond. -- Jason Hsu Founder and lead developer of Swift Linux (http://www.swiftlinux.org)