Ubuntu Linux is still a young distro, and is currently one of the most popular distros on today's Linux scene. Ubuntu is based on Debian, and makes use of its apt-get/dpkg package system. Although many people have referred to Ubuntu as "lazy Debian", Ubuntu is quickly heading in directions that are much different than Debian's. A standard Ubuntu installation includes GNOME 2.10 (you can use Kubuntu, available at http://www.kubuntu.org.uk/ if you prefer KDE to be installed by default, although its very easy to set up KDE on top of a clean Ubuntu installation), the X.org X server, the latest versions of Evolution and Firefox, a 2.6.10 kernel, and a whole lot more. Ubuntu's package management team has done a very decent job of keeping their software current. The new release of Ubuntu also includes new frontends for apt-get, called update-manager and update-notifier. These tools are supposed to make the task of keeping packages up to date easy and much less intimidating to new users, instead of typing "apt-get update" and then "apt-get upgrade" inside a root terminal. These tools act very similarly to Windows Update and the Windows Update Notifier on Windows machines.