Any of you out there running Ubuntu or Opensuse?
I just installed Ubuntu. So far so good.
Will see how this runs. I might throw XP away

Jon Carlton is a guru of that stuff... contact Jon.

I am in the process of moving from XPpro to Win7pro/64... the XP machine (software) is a mess and I really do not want to fix it... since XP will not be supported much longer.

I looked at going Ubity-boobity.... but I have some PC specific software... so I would have to run it somewhere.

Let us know how your Ubuntu works out... from what I have learned... that is the easiest and best supported place to stick one's nose into Linux.

He told me to. I had talked over 2 hours with him this morning LOL

Now that you have taken the plunge and sampled a bit of what linux has to offer you may want to try out some other Linux distributions and get a feel for the advantages and disadvantages each has to offer. If you are happy with Ubuntu but would like a bit more convenience and eye candy you may like Kubuntu It is the same thing that you are running but it has the KDE desktop instead of the Gnome desktop. IMHO it is more user friendly for the novice.
http://www.kubuntu.org/

My personal favorite is PC Linux OS with the KDE desktop.
http://www.pclinuxos.com/
It has the advantage of more available software in the package manager and the KDE desktop. It also has a forum with a lot of really helpful people.

It also has wine in the package manager. Wine will allow you to use some but not all Windoze software in linux.

Last but not least for the folks that have to have some software that will not run in Linux there is Virtual Box. It will allow you to run Windoze inside of linux. That is another story. I will stop now before I give everyone information overload.

I really appreciate all the info!
I am not afraid to learn and it seems this is a pretty friendly environment.
I would even risk to say I like it better than stupid Microsoft in some instances for now.
I will check out the links for sure. I do like the speed a lot!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Having memory counting instead of stupid 64k block banks using memory to keep the position of memory makes no sense.
Microsoft should have thrown away the platform and gone with the system Mac and Linux is using.
If I run into problems I will bug the hell outtofya!!!!!!!!!!!!
Thanks for the tips.
Linux it is

I've been following (mostly at a distance) linux for over 20 years. It does what it does very very well. If your primary use is internet & email it is a very good choice. Open Office or Libre Office are suitable for most people for office documents and spreadsheets. There is a lot of free software available for linux, most is functional and with fewer features than paid software. Less paid software is available for linux because it has such a small market share. I currently run linuxmint in a virtual machine although I rarely use it. I also run centos as a web server when I am working on websites.

Windows 8 is my primary with Office 2013 Pro (primarily because I also run an exchange server for my email which is THE corporate standard). Win 8 manages memory better so is faster than win 7 (and all previous versions) and much more secure. Many people claim to hate win 8 because of the metro interface or "no start button" which in my opinion is very very short sighted. The metro interface has everything that was on the "start button menu" and more. The worst possible security scenario is windows xp (or earlier) running as an administrator.

Have fun with linux, you can google how to do things that aren't obvious and get detailed step by step instructions. I hope it will do everything you need. I will eventually move to linux when I get tired of paying microsoft.

Gabor I almost forgot. You may want to try out The Gimp.
http://www.gimp.org/
I think you will find it to be a very advanced photo editing and graphics tool. It should be able to do everything that Photoshop Pro does. Although it takes a bit of getting used to.
If you google learn the gimp you will find lots of helpful info.

PLEASE DO NOT GIVE HIM MORE PHOTOSHOPPING HINTS !!!!

fj

Thanks. I have downloaded Gimp. I'll test it tomorrow

I have unbuntu on a old Dell machine right now and it runs fairly well.
If I could find a driver for my all in one Kodak printer scanner I would be in nirvanna.

Ray find the .ppd for it! I did the same thing for my HP. You can choose the option to "Use ppd" and boom you are in business.

gabor did you make applications for palm os in a past life? the only reason I ask is I saw a gabor kovaks that made a music program for my ancient palm os 5.0 ancient pda device

Gabor
I looked and could not find one that is specifically for a Kodak ESP office 2170. I tried some that were suggested that were for similar printers and a couple of generic drivers.
The printer just sits there. And I'm not that literate yet in unbuntu.
Kodak needs to get off their ass and start supporting Linux.

That's the funnies thing I've seen today... LOLOLOL

One of the guys in our gyro club, who does software stuff for a living, calls it that...

Gabor, how's it going with Ubuntu?

This thread got me to dig out an old laptop we recently replaced and load linux on it. It is at least 7 or 8 years old, 32 bit processor and it has 2 GB memory. I installed ubuntu 13.10 since I haven't tried ubuntu yet and will see how I like it.

I am still discovering it. Not much time to fiddle last week.
Yesterday I have experienced the black death of Microsoft on my laptop.
NLDR is missing error.......................

Ouch!!!!!!!
Fixing that can be simple or complex depending on the why and whether or not you have a good backup!!

So. I guess that gives you an incentive to go forward with linux

NTLDR is missing sux. I did copy the NTLDR.exe from i386 on the xp CD and the Autodetectntldr too.
Copied them to C:\ formatted a thumb drive with DOS and booted the damn thing. PHEW. Phucker had scared me. I didn't want to reinstall and lose everything..... Damn computers.

Unless the disk died you can usually do a repair re-install without losing everything.

I'm just starting to figure out what to install and how to configure ubuntu so I can see youtube videos on this site, etc.

Fun!!!!!!!!!