Installing is easy and when you're done, it's a complete system, with most of the apps you'd need. The hardest part of installation would probably be partitioning the disk. If you do a clean install on a disk by itself, it's pretty easy.
I use my Ubuntu desktop mainly to rip my DVD and CD collection to disk, and it's been great for that. All the applications I use are free open-source. It'd cost me probably several hundred dollars using a windows machine.
“It’d cost me probably several hundred dollars using a windows machine.”
How do you figure that? As a long term Windows user, and who also has installed different versions of Linux, i can attest that I have never needed to buy any software for Windows, except a while back for DVD authoring, nor use the bloatware than comes with it, as far more safe, quality freeware exists for Windows than for Linux, from Bible programs to video encoding, and is far quicker to get and install than going thru Synaptic or the like, and being restricted to the pertinent repos, or having to compile code. And in the US., Linux users are probably are breaking the law (unless they buy them) to get the degree of video codecs you legally have under Windows.
Linux is good, but enough with the hype.