Isn't it true that even on non-Ubuntu boxes one only very rarely wants to actually be logged on directly as root? Isn't that the whole point of sudo? I kind of liked that feature on Ubuntu, that you create an account as yourself, then when you need to do tasks that require superuser, you sudo the command, and enter the root password. Also, once you've entered the root password once in an active xterm, ensuing `sudo`s don't ask for your password again.

I'm familiar with sudo since my job class has some SU privileges (we get to sudo dhog and some other commands I can't remember right now).

Again, I program in RedHat at work and just have this Ubuntu box for fun--the most complicated thing I did with it was probably get it to run Folding@Home and use LM-sensors (the CPU is overclocked). That and I went with Dapper Drake before it was released, so I had some "early adopter" hiccups. I don't think I wrote anything more complicated than a "hello, world" program on it. Ubuntu has some great games that you can easily `apt-get.` (I have regular Ubuntu but have all the games from Kubuntu and Edubuntu on it) That's about all I use it for now--my 8-year-old son loves Kolf.

Speaking of which, Ubuntu has cool names for their releases--Breezy Badger, Dapper Drake, etc. That alone is worth the cost of installing it!

Please correct me if I am wrong about not being root very often, even on your own home computer.

Edit: Isn't booting to console in Ubuntu as simple as holding down a key or two during bootup?