UBUNTU! (6.06 Dapper Drake)

So.
Ubuntu.
An interesting system, that. It starts you off with a nice, light, and fast GUI. It comes with:
-Open Office,
-Firefox,
-Oogles of games,
-Many software options over the internet,
-And lots of instant hardware support.

However, it gets confusing fast. There is a steep learning curve with the Terminal (command line interface), through which anything important is run. Example - to install Java or MATLAB, you have to do it through this Terminal. As such, it does have a much steeper learning curve. However, once you've crawled up it a ways, and learned some basics, you can actually do pretty powerful things with it. Thus you can definitely tell that it is still a command line driven system, as compared to Window's primarily graphical interface. What is comforting is that it does copy most of Window's shortcut commands and idiosyncrasies, and it has enough of a GUI that novice users can use it and not see a noticeable difference.

Installation was fairly easy. The process that I went through is as follows. First I backed up everything from my laptop onto my desktop, so that in case it all didn't work out, I could restore from that. Next I restarted with the windows CD in, and used it to reformat the drive as such:
-20 GB NTFS partition - for installing Windows XP
-10 GB FAT32 partition - for storing photos and such so I can access them from both operating systems
-6 GB unformatted partition - for installing Ubuntu 6.0.6, otherwise known as Dapper Drake
-1 GB unformatted partition - for use as a Linux swap file
-250 MB unformatted partition - for my laptop's QuickPlay system (plays music and DVD's without starting up an OS)

Now, those of you that are partition savvy will realize that that's 5 partitions on an IDE drive, which normally isn't a happening thing. Thus, the 6 GB and 10 GB partitions I made as logical disks within an extended partition (I think that's the correct terminology). Anyway, I continued and installed Windows XP, went through it's Microsoft update saga, and then downloaded the Ubuntu 6.06 ISO from www.ubuntu.com, and then burned it to a CD.
I then left it in the CD drive, restarted the computer, and started from the CD. I selected the top option, (start from CD or something like that), and loaded Ubuntu from the CD, and then double clicked the install link on the desktop. After that I followed easy instructions, formatted the partitions that I had set aside for it, and installed Ubuntu. After a restart, I was first presented with the GRUB boot loader, which gives you the option of starting into Ubuntu Linux, or starting Windows XP. I selected Linux, and let the goodness begin.

As I said, the hardware support 'out of the box' was excellent. All of the hardware on my hp dv4000 has thus far been supported naturally, including my wireless card, my Ethernet card, and the scroll bar on the side of my touchpad, as well as my CD/DVD-RW drive. In fact, I'm writing this from the Engineering Center Lobby at the University of Colorado at Boulder, over my wireless connection. I must admit though, I have problems connecting to secured wireless networks, including the one where I'm living now, so it's not always hitchless.

Co-existence with Windows XP has thus far been peaceable. I'm able to read and write photos, office document files, and other things on the 10 GB shared partition from either system without a hitch. And the boot loader doesn't add any significant noticeable time to startup. One minor peeve about that though, is that it gives you 10 seconds to select a system to start, and automatically boots into Ubuntu, even though I sadly most often want to boot into XP.

So far, it's been much faster than XP, especially in startup, shutdown, and application starting. Most noticeably, Firefox opens near instantaneously, a grand improvement over the speeds of opening either Firefox or IE in XP. Additionally, the amount of software available online is quite surprising. Ubuntu even includes a program called Adept, which shows you a seemingly endless list of programs available for Linux systems.

As I said before, it's a very easy system for day-to-day use. I'm even thinking of getting an old desktop and installing Ubuntu on it for my mother to use in her kitchen, to access recipes and such, because she doesn't need much more than document reading and internet access, not stuff you exactly need the newest fastest Windows XP system for.

All in all, it's a good, fast, stable system, with a good GUI, but a steep learning curve. Installation is easy, and maintenance is a snap. A good system to learn, especially as many companies in industry are using Linux more and more (I've heard that Dell has started shipping some computers with Linux pre-installed). If you have the free disk space, time, and some place to back up to, I whole-heartedly recommend giving it a try.

(ed note: chopped up the paragraphs a bit for readability. -Oz)