Prompted by Michaels post HERE, I downloaded Kubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon). The image I selected is described there as:

PC (Intel x86) desktop CD
For almost all PCs. This includes most machines with Intel/AMD/etc type processors and almost all computers that run Microsoft Windows, as well as newer Apple Macintosh systems based on Intel processors. Choose this if you are at all unsure.

Specifications of the system I installed on are:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 Socket 939 Dual Manchester Core at 2.40 GHz
ASUS A8N SLI Deluxe Motherboard
NVIDIA 7800GT 256 MB Single GPU
2 X 1GB Corsair DDR 400
3 X WD Raptor 36 GB
NVIDIA CK810 Onboard Audio (Realtec chip)

In the past I've not been able to install Ubuntu on my hard drives, but after burning the ISO to CD, I took a chance and was very pleasantly surprised

After loading the Live CD, I selected to install to hard drive and chose one of the clean unformated hard drives. I also have Windows XP installed on this system but didn't mind if that installation was trashed.

Installation was a breeze with no command line entries required at all. It took about as long as XP does to install.

After installation I had a bit of a run around with an unfamiliar desktop, but slowly started finding my way around. There didn't seem to be any way to sort out my screen resolution and it wasn't fitting on the monitor the way it should. I fixed that using the monitors built in functions and then found that I could have done it from Start>System Settings>Monitor and Display.

A huge plus is every single device had drivers installed during setup

There is a mass of third party software like Office installed by default for just about every function you can think of, but I didn't like the default Web Browser so I downloaded Firefox 2 for linux. Big Mistake. I tried to find and run setup.exe, you know like you do in Windows? Well I double clicked a thing called install dot something or other from the package I downloaded and the system froze and I mean froze real good No amount of hitting Ctrl+Alt+Del go me anywhere, so I did a hard restart. That was another Big Mistake. The system couldn't find any hard drives on restart and I had a series of BIOS beeps warning that no HDD's are found.

A BIOS reset fixed that thank goodness I was able to boot back to Kubuntu. Interesting that a dual boot with Windows XP was auto setup by the Kubuntu installer. No need to mess with GRUB or whatever.

I found "adept_installer" under Add/Remove Programs on the start menu. It lists a lot of programs one can auto download and install from the Kubuntu website. That worked perfectly and I got Firefox 2.00 installed that way.

I've taken a few screenshots of the desktop but can't for the life of me figure how to copy them to my external USB drive to be able to post them here from my main XP machine, so I'll get them up later.

I'm very impressed with the ease of installation, with the fact that all device drivers were installed during setup and with the mass of software applications that are available. Now I need to familiarize with the slightly "different to Windows" user interface.

I installed the Ubuntu also prompted by that post. I guess I need to get a screen shot together. The problem I have is I do not know where to look to see if the drivers were installed for a Promise PCI Sata card I have installed.

I'll snap a couple of shots from my Kubuntu install.

I'll be looking for anti-virus and firewall software soon as I think I'm going to be playing around in Kubuntu quite a lot

Grav!ty wrote:

I'll be looking for anti-virus and firewall software soon as I think I'm going to be playing around in Kubuntu quite a lot

One thing about Linux is the antivirus.....

There really is not many viri in the real world for Linux

Firewall -> iptables
AV -> ClamAV

It's likely that iptables is already in use, though possibly not. If it isn't, there should be an ubuntu/kubuntu/xubuntu wiki article about installing and configuring it. It would be the same in all of them as far as I know. ClamAV is the only "big" antivirus program i know of for linux. They have a Mac and Windows version available too as far as I know. NOD32 has one as well, though I think it's meant mainly for servers. There really isn't any virus though that will work on linux that you will likely encounter though. As for removeable devices, that is one thing Windows does best. Mac OS X isn't too bad, but Linux/Unix is another story entirely. I'll see if i can find something though for firewall and removable devices then though.

Firestarter is a GUI that you can use to configure iptables... but I don't worry about it anyway since I'm behind a router and I'm not worried about any malware trying to access any outside servers.

hallelujah
ubuntu is very simple to install and use, it is also one of the most stable distro around. however, i will not recommend it to a new user because while it is a simple graphic system it is also an OS where one has to tweak here and there before having fun with it.

it is a very well protected system, from propriety software and copy wright to damaging installed programs. comparing to mandriva, fedora and pcoslinux it would come out as the best secured while others are known for their very beautiful graphically and multimedia out of box character.

installing software/programs one normally do not have to download anything like in windows, but using yum/yast/synaptic or whichever is available to download and install compatible programs.

I would absolutely recommend Ubuntu to new users. It really runs fine on most computers without any tweaks. Anyone who wants to "have fun" with their OS will need to change settings, but most of the Ubuntu settings that need to be changed to have fun are in the GUI anyway. And then, assuming people are installing this OS themselves, I think that if someone can install an OS they can find their way around Ubuntu.

It's better than something like OSX... you can't have any fun with that

I've installed it on my main system too now that I'm a bit more confident about it. It didn't break anything and auto setup a dual boot with XP. I'd really like to know more about the coding and commands used, for example in setting up a manual installation to a specific hard drive and partition.

I have no idea about what the various options mean when trying to manually format a partition, so there's a lot for me to learn.