Pinguy OS - Ubuntu For Everyone

Yesterday I finally decided to see what the fuss was all about and installed Pinguy OS. Pinguy is a distribution of Ubuntu that comes pre-packaged with all the nifty software and system tweaks that most power users spend weeks learning about and laboring over. Here, all the work is done for you, so you can just sit back while everything installs, and then jump right in. No muss. No fuss.

Of course, there are still a few things you can tweak, and you're probably not going to have a use for some of the software that comes pre-installed. Not to worry, you can easily uninstall anything you don't need, and the look and feel of the desktop is still fully customizable. Pinguy just gives you a huge head start. It's basically Ubuntu for everyone.

Just for kicks, here are a few screenshots of my system after only 20 minutes or so of tweaking. For the record, this would've taken me hours with a regular installation of Ubuntu.

Desktop:

Nautilus-Elementary file manager with Coverflow:

Nautilus-Elementary with "Columns" extension pre-installed to show an audio file's tag information. Columns are completely customizable. Very handy for organizing a large music collection. As you can see, there's also an extension pre-installed that allows Nautilus to automatically pull down cover art from a variety of different online databases (Amazon, Last.fm, etc.) for any album it recognizes. Sweet.

A juiced-up installation of Mozilla Thunderbird, complete with several handy plugins and a custom theme:

Compiz Settings Manager is pre-installed with Pinguy, so setting up my workspaces took only seconds. I'm using the Compiz Expo plugin here to show a preview of all my workspaces:

By default, Pinguy uses the "Mintmenu" panel applet in lieu of the standard main menu to which most Ubuntu users are accustomed. Similar to the Windows 7 Start menu, all of your applications, system settings, and destinations are right at your fingertips, all in one place:

A global menu that can be placed on the top panel. Mac users will appreciate this:

For more Pinguy screenshots, click here.

If you've never tried Linux before, this is a great place to get your feet wet. You can actually experience the usability and flexibility of the OS right off the bat without having to worry about setting up all the nifty features and extensions that make Ubuntu fun to use. It's all already there.

There's no feature or customization installed with Pinguy that you can't get on a regular Ubuntu system, but if you're not like me and don't want to go through the challenge of digging them all up and learning how to install and activate them yourself, this Linux distro was made for you. Jump in. It's free!