How about someone like Steve Yegge?? I believe he's "cool". He has a modern sense of humor, he writes about computer memory by using Mario Kart as an example and admits to smoking pot, and all that. He writes well, and could perhaps be considered a "journalist", which is what the summary suggests as an example to kids. But if someone can sit down and read over 500 words text, aren't they already more nerdy that average? And in any case, how are even the cool nerds supposed to present themselves, if the medium has to be non-nerdy and non-compulsory?

Perhaps it's sometimes more effective for people who aren't primarily geeks to show their nerdy side. I remember how nice it was when Pink Floyd presented the synthesizer they used in the Dark Side of The Moon, although it wasn't necessary to enjoy the music that was their main focus.

As for education, having Wolfram's Rule 90 as a part of an art class might interest someone in procedural 2D graphics. It's quick and easy to plot on graph paper using simple rules.

Apart from reading and education, what they could do is put cool hackers in movies. And even then, they should be creative. Usually movies depict hackers as someone who basically uses or works around someone else's product (The Matrix, Die Hard 4, I think), which is the idea that non-technical people have of computers in general. That is, they probably don't think they use computer _programs_ - they think they use software _products_. So, instead of being able to just work with existing systems, maybe it would be cool if they also did something original. For instance, someone could set up a time bomb using some kind of sleep(x) command, or something. Use a simple while(true) loop to do... something. Indefinitely. I don't know what, because I'm not cool.

I think that by far the most substantial difference between Ubuntu and the other distros is the semi-automatic installation of proprietary multimedia libs and hardware drivers. I used to run Fedora from FC2 to FC6 as well as Suse 9.x, and had to deal with ATI's installer and custom repos a lot. These are the primary reasons why I use Ubuntu nowadays, as all other differences these popular distros seem quite trivial. It doesn't seem very important which DE each distro ships with, as you can always install whichever you like afterwards. Same thing with default apps like IM clients, though it may take a bit of reconfiguring to integrate them with others apps. Basically, the review just seemed to compare the distros out-of-the-box, without assuming they'll ever be configured, which is kind of boring, and perhaps only of interest to inexperienced users. Speaking of which, how were they able to "manage each of them from other PCs with the OpenSSH remote control program"? I thought Ubuntu has never included sshd by default.

r200 cards should work fine using the open source driver. I used to have one. Ati (or AMD) has stopped supporting it with their proprietary drivers (they do that a lot, they just stopped supporting my new r430-based card!), but the open source driver should get the most out of r200 and r300 cards, and nowadays r400 and r500 too. If you really want to use fglrx with your old Ati card, you need to get an ancient version from Ati's website. Ubuntu isn't going to offer old fglrx drivers based on your card model, because they typically wouldn't be compatible with new kernels and XServers.

(My) first post, from Finland. It doesn't seem that this connection is supposed to be FREE - just that some companies are obliged to provide such connections (at least 1 mbps, the local definition of "broadband") throughout the country. In other words, you would still have to pay for it. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I haven't seen any mention of there being no charge.