[ShadowAce]

[fwdude]

bkmrk

[wrench]

PCLinuxOS is Ubuntu based and made to look like Windows.

Switching was no problem, Gimp, Firefox, an a full Office Suite is included.

Put it on a system, and in less than a day, anyone will be up and running, and never need MS or Mac again.

[two23]

I put Ubuntu on a small PC and love it.
It was a cheap little name brand desktop and windows just slugged it out.
It’s a spare PC that I keep in my studio and it runs great.
Ubuntu is user friendly, free and has a great app store (a LOT of free stuff)

[Vigilantcitizen]

Been a ubuntu convert for 12 years. Will never go back. No viruses...no hacks...no ID theft.

[bigbob]

Most PC users couldn’t use the command line if that had to, so no point in fearing it.

[zeugma]

I've helped a few make the transition to Linux, and the thing that I've found to be most frustrating is that some users don't realize that when you make the change, you're going to have to engage your brain for a while. It's not really that difficult, but you're actually going to have to occasionally think about and actually understand what it is that you want to do.

In my experience, the vast majority of people have no idea whatsoever of how their computer works, and really understand no more than rote incantations to accomplish certain tasks.

I've got a fellow who I set up on Fedora 12 several years ago. He's happy, in that his computer is stable, it does what he wants and is relatively pain free. He won't let me upgrade him to a more recent version though. At the moment I'm pretty much OK with that. As long as everything is working for him, it really doesn't matter how far back he is.

 

[ArcadeQuarters]

I’d love to stop supporting Microsoft but Linux still isn’t there yet. I’ve tried to run Linux about 3 times over the past decade. Two things consistently happen for me:

1. With no changes to the hardware or software, it (Ubuntu) can one day just refuse to fully boot. It goes to a purple screen and I have to find instructions to modify some config file to boot it up.

2. It still doesn’t work well with any video card I’ve ever owned. With some cards, it didn’t use the full resolution. With others, it runs the fan 100% of the time.

[for-q-clinton]

YES

It is getting easier, but yes it is hard. The biggest thing is you'll hear..."Oh did you install this program it's wonderful for doing XYX".

So you run off to get said program. Oh wait it's not available on your build of Linux. So now you have to either change your build of Linux or compile the program youself.

[taxcontrol]

While working at IBM, I have used Linux as my laptop OS (Red Hat Enterprise) for the better part of 3 years. My duties had me traveling globally, and generally speaking, I performed my own pc support. In those three years, I never had a problem. I did have 2 apps that I had to run in a VMware player instance for Windows - Visio and Project. Other than those two apps, everything ran in Linux.

I am now back on Windows due to both role changes and policy changes. I have had 5 instances of a total lock up requiring a forced power cycle in 3 months. I also have countless other little Windows “features” that have caused me no end of hassles.

I would love to go back to Linux.

[Paradox]

As along time veteran, compiled Linux systems manually, just for fun, had a Mac at work for a while, I simply have no need to use anything other than Windows. It works fine for what I do.

[molson209]

Lubuntu Linux is the one to try ,been running it on this laptop forever and it will run on a very old laptop

[ctdonath2]

Every few years (and this has been going on for _decades_) I’ve made a valiant attempt to embrace Linux.

Every time I give up, stymied by the proliferation of “oh, you just need to...” twiddling required to make anything work, plus the propensity of the platform to do nothing at all when something goes wrong (instead of, say, tell me in plain English that something went wrong - much less actually what in a comprehensible manner). It just requires so much d@med FIDDLING with everything - which is remarkable, in that my JOB is software engineer focused on “fiddling” with making things work. Oh, sure, I can make it work, but that’s just costing me no less than a premium OS X setup in terms of the voluminous time & frustration required to make anything work sensibly. Proponents can’t seem to grasp this, unable to get past their acceptance of endless “oh, you just need to ...” involving things which no user should be expected to know or do.

[rdb3]

If you're asking me, Ubuntu is the closest one to being very user-friendly, but even that one needs some work done in that department.

I must disagree here.

Linux Mint is, I believe, more user-friendly.

Jesus Christ: You can’t impeach Him and He ain’t gonna resign.

[TexasRepublic]

I have used Linux for at least five years now. Microsoft Vista pushed me over the edge and I was ready to try some alternative. I don’t know Unix, so the OS had to be Mac-like in simplicity - I was not going to compile anything, write arcane scripts, or spend much time at a command prompt. I put myself in the shoes of Joe Blow and went looking.

Both Ubuntu and Mint offer the “Mate” desktop - very like Windows XP and runs efficiently on older hardware. If you choose a Dell “business” computer model (such as Optiplex, Inspiron, or Latitude) that has been out for a few years, and a HP USB printer, you can hardly go wrong. Fancy video cards might be more problematic on some models. Usually some flavor of Ubuntu or Mint will work with those.

If Apple published iTunes for Linux, I would have everything I need.

Installing Ubuntu and Mint is just as easy as installing Windows (sometimes easier), and certainly faster.