Regarding "work out of the box".... I started using Ubuntu with Breezy Badger (5.10). In those days, I had been goofing around with Mandrake (RIP, now Mandriva), Fedora Core 4, Knoppix 3.4, and Suse 10. Back then, it was so frustrating to just play an mp3 file, get Wi-Fi working, etc... Maybe it's because I was a lot younger and didn't know what I was doing. But it was also because a lot of drivers and codecs were protected under Intellectual Property rights. Ubuntu let you click a button to install all the codecs! They said "Hey, you legally aren't supposed to use these codecs. Are you sure you want to install them? [Yes] [ No]" -- and we all just hit yes. That's all it took to get your multimedia to play! Boom, easy! Even if not strictly legal. That was a needle mover for Ubuntu adoption, imho.