Well, I believe every single IT professional must have used this linux distro.

I believe it is a perfect distro for a laptop user - except the hibernation/suspend feature. I don't say there is not, but it need more perfection. Except that everything is working mostly out of the box. No additional drivers is needed for most of the laptops, for thinkpads no drivers at all needed to install.

Ubuntu Linux comes in 4 flavors - Ubuntu main flavor is ubuntu which comes with Gnome desktop, xubuntu which comes with XFCE, kubuntu with KDE and edubuntu is also based on Gnome but it is mainly designed for educational purposes i.e. to be used in schools, collages etc.

I was using ubuntu for a quite some time now. I like the ease of installation, the drivers which comes with the box, the list of applications you can get. What I also like in ubuntu is that it comes only with 1 CD only unlike other distros like SUSE, Fedora.

What I don't like is by default it installs a lot of shit that I don't even touch. Like Evolution, Games, tomboy etc and etc...

I like Gnome, but I don't like that it is not light, I like XFCE but I don't like xubuntu which comes with the version and design of the default installation and also the default set of apps.

So what do I do? I install ubuntu default, I remove all the gnome related packages, remove evolution - basically I strip down whatever I dont like and dont use. Next thing I remove splash boot, I leve command line to be command line with vga=791 resolution and font changed to 12 if not mistaken. I also remove the console beep sound( modprobe -r snspkr, uncomment /etc/inputrc some line...) install XFCE from their website and on top of this I install my own set of packages I use.
Here's the list of what I use:

1. XFCE
2. mrxvt
3. Thunderbird, Firefox, Opera, Gaim, skype
4. Wine
5. Apache2, PHP5, MySQL
6. Conky
7. xmms, vlc, multimedia codecs (just use easyubuntu)
8. Graveman
9. f-spot
10. tsclient
11. vmware