The familiar old script that Linux is only for geeks has been largely rewritten recently with the arrival of Ubuntu, a version of Linux for the average user. In its three years on the scene, Ubuntu has quickly gained a reputation for being easy to configure and use.

On Thursday, Canonical, the London-based company which acts as Ubuntu's commercial sponsor, released version 7.10 of the software. This latest release, dubbed "Gutsy Gibbon," proves that Ubuntu Linux can compete with and, in some cases, trump Windows as an everyday desktop system when it comes to pure usability.

Gamers and hardcore media hounds may still feel left out – DVDs were a little bit tricky, and the lack of support for popular games, a long-time Linux gripe, is still evident here – but we found playing music and watching movies in the new Ubuntu to be every bit as pleasant as it is under OS X or Windows.

Gutsy Gibbon is certainly easier to install and set up than Windows Vista, and it's very close to matching Mac OS X when it comes to making things "just work" out of the box. Wi-Fi, printing, my digital camera and even my iPod all worked immediately after installation – no drivers or other software required.

As with previous versions, Gutsy Gibbon ships as a "live CD," which means you can boot from your DVD drive and test Ubuntu without touching your existing system. If you like what you see, committing to Ubuntu is just a matter of clicking "Install." From there, Ubuntu will lead you through the process of installing the OS.

If you choose to dual boot with Windows, you can tell Ubuntu to import all your settings and files. This is what most new Ubuntu users will be doing, so I tried it. Including the importing, installation took under 20 minutes.

My testing was done on a Toshiba laptop using the final release candidate for Gutsy Gibbon. Canonical says that, if all goes well, there will be no difference between the candidate and Thursday's final release.

Once Ubuntu was installed, it rebooted, immediately recognized my laptop's Wi-Fi card and automatically joined my local network using my imported settings. It even defaulted to Wi-Fi Protected Access encryption, something that required additional configuration in previous versions.

Music management is good enough with the built-in Rhythmbox player, though I did have to install additional codecs to get MP3 and Windows Media Audio support. However, the process has been improved since Feisty Fawn, the 7.04 release. Rhythmbox imported all my music from a Windows XP partition without issues, and had no trouble uploading music to my iPod Shuffle.

DVD playback was a slightly different story. The Totem media player, Ubuntu's default DVD player, lacked the necessary codecs out of the box, but helpfully offered to fetch them. Unfortunately, even after the codecs were installed, I was unable to get any of my Netflix DVDs to play.

This isn't a new experience, as I was never able to get DVDs to play under either of the previous two versions of Ubuntu using Totem. Luckily, finding and installing the more robust MPlayer DVD player through the Add/Remove programs panel is easy, and DVD playback in MPlayer worked without a hitch.

When it comes to finding and installing applications, the Add/Remove Programs feature in Ubuntu surpasses both Windows and Mac OS X.

Whereas Windows and Mac users usually need to comb the web for popular applications for their newly installed systems, Linux users simply turn to the package management program, which makes it easy to browse and install software without scouring Google. Open up Install/Remove Applications and you'll see all the available software listed in one easy-to-browse panel. Ubuntu will also inform you any time there are updates available – something that just isn't possible on Windows or a Mac without a third-party utility. There's also a similar component for installing add-ons in Firefox, Ubuntu's default web browser.

Other notable changes in Ubuntu 7.10 are the latest GNOME Desktop, which provides much improved drag-and-drop support to the user interface, and Compiz, the whiz-bang 3-D desktop effects package, which is enabled by default.

Ubuntu and the GNOME Desktop team have put considerable effort into improving the user experience for accessing many of Linux's under-the-hood options. A new graphical interface makes it much easier to make adjustments to monitor settings and set up a dual-monitor workstation – both of which previously required using the command line.

Beyond these key enhancements, Gutsy Gibbon incorporates some of Mac OS X's most useful desktop traits to improve the user experience. New to this release is fast user-switching, a mimic of the same feature in OS X for switching between user accounts without logging out. Another nod to Apple is the improved Spotlight-like applet designed to search the hard drive and act as an application launcher. Printing has also been overhauled, and each print dialog now features a default virtual "PDF printer" which allows any application to output PDF files, something Mac OS X users will recognize.

If you've been considering making the switch from Windows or Mac, Ubuntu makes the process painless. It's ability to seamlessly import your settings, music and data from a Windows partition erases one of the most pressing barriers for new users. And once you're in, the learning curve is minimal. In fact, besides requiring a little futzing to get multimedia playback set up, Gutsy Gibbon is about as easy as Linux gets.