Ubuntu's first release (October 20th, 2004) version 4.10, came at a time when Fedora Core release 2 was already out, and FCR3 was just about to be shipped. Amazingly though, through clever marketing and free (shipit) cd's (and of course 'word of mouth'), Ubuntu quickly became one of the most popular linux distros in no time at all, and the Ubuntu hype never subsided as anyone familiar with Digg/OSnews/Slashdot would know. It seemed to me that more and more linux users (or Windows switchers) were now starting off with (or switching to) Ubuntu, so it was time for me to put it through it's paces (for 30 days to get a real feel for the os) and see what all the fuss was about. Would this distro live up to the hype or not ? In the following six-part article, I hope to answer that question.