Well I finally made the switch to Linux. I feel somewhat liberated. I chose Ubuntu linux because a good friend of mine, Shinzui, loves it.

I will try to share some of my experiences here.

You can get a live or install iso image at the Ubuntu home page. I chose to download it using the Azureus client.

The live iso image is really nice because you can run linux on your pc without installing it. This was really nice because I could validate alot up front without installing it.

The install iso image is exactly as it says its the full installation. The installer is quite mellow and text based. However it does the job and does it well.

I installed Ubuntu Linux onto a Dell Inspiron 5150 laptop with 60 gigs of disk, 1 gig of ram, and a 3.2 ghz hyperthreaded cpu. By default the non SMP kernel is installed. Being a newbie I didn't realize that because when I installed fedora it utilized the SMP kernel without me having to think about it. Therefore my expectation was, Ubuntu would take the same approach.