Ubuntu
 

For those who have no experience with Ubuntu but are interested in learning, Ubuntu is a great form of Linux to start with.

If you have a benching/gaming pc and another you use for web surfing only then Ubuntu can potentially be a great asset to you. It's very user friendly, will run many windows based apps if you install Wine, will never get viruses or spyware and never needs to be defragged. It just works.

A big benefit of Ubuntu is it's resource useage, an older pc that is too slow to run vista will run Ubuntu fabulously and will look as good or better than vista too! As an example I am running Ubuntu on my g/f's old DELL, it's a Dimension 2400 with a 2.66ghz celeron, 2x512mb DDR333 and Radeon 9250 256mb PCI video card. It's useage while chatting on Pidgeon with a couple of windows open, idling ventrilo and listening to some music on Pandora is about 300-350mb ram and 10-15% cpu useage. In XP it couldn't even do all that at once!

Oh yeah...Ubuntu is also free!

I'll be givin this a whirl soon, thx Frank.

You know it's funny how many misconceptions there are about using Ubuntu, my Dad was of the opinion that it was all command line based, looked like crap and was inherently difficult to use.

I just told him he was a puss and probably not smart enough to figure it out anyways..(LOL) He of course was incensed and promptly demanded that I drop him off a .iso so he could install it (he still has a hard time burning his own .iso's)

He installed it and has had very litle trouble with it so that pretty much means that a one handed, near sighted autistic monkey with hemmorhoids could do it.

I sent an invitation to your father with a link to this post.
If you don't show up here for a while we will know you got your ass kicked and you can't sit down next to the PC, or anywhere else, until you heal up.

Nah, even with my wrists being gimpy he still knows better!

LOL

I usually run XFCE (Xubuntu) desktop environment on anything Pee4 and older. It feels less Clunky to me.

wow ive heard so much about it but ust havent used it much!!!


My mother in law seems to get viruses all the time on her laptop, I wonder if this would work for her

Try it, it's very Mac like for general use and she would probably have an easier time with Ubuntu than vista.

Ubuntu rocks hard. I like the price (free) and the community style support. Once you learn where everything is, it is too easy to use.

For interwebs/office apps, you will not miss windblowz. Not the greatest for gaming tho.

Is there anything it cant do?? besides gaming?