First of all, I should note that Ubuntu focuses on the Desktop. If you want to install a server, stick with Debian. Ubunto won't ask you if you want to install Gnome, it will just setup all you need for a desktop.

Yesterday I installed ubuntu on the other two machines. Installation went fine after I had nuke the Bios password so I could boot from CD. I can't complain much about Ubuntu.

Similar to Debian installations, the first thing after install I do is to modify the apt/sources.list file, and add an apt/preferences file, too. With Ubuntu, I pin the ubuntu sources to a high priority, while adding Debian at a lower priority.

The reason is simple: The machine are to be used for developing in Java, so we need an "official" JDK. The debian package java-package is a great help in this, so I needed that as well as some support packages. Other packages I installed are "gnumeric" (because OOo Calc is a lot slower) and gpdf (I don't like xpdf for usability, but gpdf is usually just fine for me. The only bug of gpdf I encountered with my own .pdf file is that the dashed lines are like 1cm dash, 1cm space... Of course there are features of PDF that gpdf does not support. Often xpdf does neither, so I don't thinkg there is much regression...

So while Ubuntu appears nice for a desktop system, and I probably will recommend it to some users, I'll stick with my good old Debian I feel comfortable with and I have everything I need. Thanks of course to Canonical for employing Debian Developer to work on Ubuntu, because a lot of this work will flow back to Debian. And for a first release, Warty Warthog does really well. There is a lot about Ubuntu, Debian can learn.