Don't hesitate to ask for help as you run into issues.
That's how we learn.

I like it a lot, too, but never have been able to read the floppy drive with it,
even with the upgrades. Windows reads the floppy drive just fine. This is a well
known bug in Lucid.

Is there a patch that fixes that, yet?

I asked about this when I was working on archiving some floppies
a few months ago.

Someone mentioned floppy support from the desktop was dropped in
Ubuntu at version 08.xx I never did figure out how to open a floppy
from the desktop (I'm running 09.10) but was able to operate it from
a terminal window (fd0,fd1), which was good enough for what I wanted
to do.

Welcome to the world of Ubuntu I've been converting Windows
users to Ubuntu for a while and whilst most take to it there are those
who just don't get on with it and ask to be put back onto WinXP.
Various reasons but some as weird as missing the Windows versions of
Solitaire and Free Cell - even though these are in Ubuntu too

Some folks just don't get on well with change but for some reason are
more willing to accept it from MicroSoft .... funny old world !!

If they have the hard drive space, maybe set them up with dual boot so they
can go back & forth until they do get comfortable with Ubuntu?

They can also install an Oracle VM virtual box and install in it their Windows,
which means one can use at the same time Ubuntu and Windows without having to
reboot.

A better plan is to install Windows VM in Linux since Windows is subject to
viruses and the file system is more likely to become corrupted and it needs
frequent defragmentation. This way you can clone the Windows VM and run the
clone if it fails and your data resides on a more solid operating system
that is less prone to failure in the Linux host. There is a reason why most
of the internet runs on FLOSS.

Presently I am using ubuntu as my main OS.
By the way, about FLOSS on servers, in Romania the vast majority of servers
are running Linux. there is some BSD, Solaris (very rarely) and rarely, Windows.
It is ironic that so few people here want Linux on the desktop.

Servers vs Desktop - Linux has always been king in the server
world, much to MicroSoft's dismay, as the OS is rarely bundled with
the hardware as it is in the home PC. In fact it's this 'lock in' that
MicroSoft has between the hardware and software in the home PC market
that is the only reason they have such a high market share. Given a
level playing field other OS's would be in with a chance now but that
door was very firmly bolted many years ago when Bill Gates's vision of
a PC in every home was laughed at by the other OS makers of the day.

All credit to Bill and MicroSoft as we wouldn't have the PC market we
have now but it has meant the creation of the Redmond Monster. However
where is the blame here ... Bill Gates, or the nay-sayers of the day
who did not have the vision to see what was possible ????? Remember
that the first OS's that MicroSoft pushed out were little more than
rip offs, and badly done at that - it was their aggressive marketing
that got them where they are today ( and being left to get away with
it as the other manufacturers believed MicroSoft had got it wrong and
would burn themselves out - it was they who'd got it very wrong as it
happened and many of them went to the wall !! ).

Not all that long ago (to an old feller) nearly every American school had at
least one APPLE MacINTOSH computer somewhere for students to tinker with and
learn on with the idea that they'd gravitate to the Apple brand. Didn't seem to
work. I think it was the IBM/MS that launched MS/DOS Windows.

Anyone remember the Radio Shack TRS-80? And the Times Sinclair 1000? And the
original Compaq?

Me? In 1984 I bought a Kaypro 2X "transluggable" with two double-density
double-sided 5 1/4 inch floppy drives running CP/M. WordStar, CalcStar,
etc.Star, and, my favorite, MBASIC. Oh, and don't forget Second City Software's
"Draw" with its pixel-by-pixel graphics.

Yes, I remember those days... I built my own Sinclair ZX81 from a kit
in 1982. Never liked Apple computers, and couldn't afford them. I
remember the TRS-80 Model 1, which a friend had, but the first Radio
Shack Computer I had was the Colour Computer, which was quite a step
up from the Sinclair. I had several Tandy 1000 computers starting in
1984 and have lost count of how many I have had altogether.

Right now 4 machines run Kubuntu, 1 with Mint-KDE, which dual boots
to WinXP so I can use my Trainz simulator. The laptops and netbooks
run Kubuntu very well. The college I taught at was given a dozen old
Compac "luggables" and I had a couple at home for a while, but they
were so limited they went out in the garbage in about 1998.

I haven't regretted getting rid of really old machines. The most
recent I have now are about 5 years old and perfectly suited to Linux.

I had an Apple II and bailed on Apple when they abandoned that line in
favour of the closed ugly monochrome Macintosh. The Mac still leaves a bad
taste in my mouth. BTW, I still have my Apple II and an Imagewriter printer.
I learned computing on the Apple II and the Commodore PET with a cassette
drive. But we are dating ourselves.

I liked Woz but never trusted or liked Jobs and still would not buy anything
that he is involved with. I read an article in Forbes about Oracle and Larry
Ellison that sums up Jobs as well. Ellison says that Oracle wants its own
ecosystem. It does not want to compete or share with anyone. That is
basically where Apple is coming from. They are against competition because
it allows for the competitor to have some of the marketshare and is
therefore profit leak. It is summed up here:
m.zdnet.com/.../7404

didn't have the Times Sinclair 1000 but did have the 2000. RS TRS-80, that
was fun. Had an Kaypro too, that was some thing to have for business.
Yes, IBM and MS did devlope an operating system together. IBM work on OS/2
and MS work on Windows. OS/2 could run Windows programs in an window. And
you didn't need Windows install. That was OS/2.with Win3.1.Had an copy until
about two years ago. Move and it was lost.
Still got an copy of OS/2 Warp4.

One of my prized possessions in the '60's was a space invaders game that ran
fast and was a lot of fun on a monochrome screen. Nothing remarkable there,
except that this one was only 11 K in size - that's right, 11,000 bytes!
eventually the 5.25" floppy wore out...

It did have one bug. There was no way to shut it down except by rebooting,
but in the old DOS days that didn't take long.

BTW, I switched over to Maverick a couple of days ago. The way it works on
my system id that I have two partitions for Ubuntu, one is for my everyday
use and is the latest stable version and the other is for experimental
releases such as Maverick. Around beta time I usually install the beta on my
everyday partition replacing the stable release (Lucid).

It is the first time that I have used the new installer. WOW! I'm impressed.
Mint users will be annoyed because now you can check a box to install the
restricted extras so multimedia will work out of the box. Gone is that
advantage. But you can also check a box to install updates at the time of
installation. But the nicest thing is that it begins to download and install
while you are still typing your personal information. Nice! It was fast and
slick. The only problem is that it wanted to encrypt home and I could not
de-select it. I hope they fix that, but everything else went smoothly.

I am using Kubuntu, but have Ubuntu installed as well. Ubuntu still does not
have anything on the right of the window bar and the buttons are on the left
as with Lucid. Kubuntu has KDE 4.5 which is the best desktop environment
that I have ever used. It is fast and stable. I looks great and has lots of
toys to play with, just the way that I like it. The Settings Manager is
totally redone. I got lost trying to change settings. It will take awhile to
get used to it. It has nice monochrome icons like Ubuntu has, except nicer
because it is KDE which just looks lusher due to all of the plasmoids and
transparencies. The whole fresh installation took only a couple of hours to
get things back to the way they were on Lucid. That includes installing,
updating, installing all of the apps and customising. It took the longest to
get Tweetdeck installed. I forgot how I did it so it was trial and error.

You need Adobe Air to get it to work which is no problem to install even on
64-bit, but the Tweetdeck java does not work with my 64-bit Ubuntu. It said
installing, but never did. I had to search for a download on a separate
site. Google came to the rescue. C|net had it. Once I got that it opened in
Adobe Air and I was back in business. It looks great and works well. It is
now my go to Twitter and Identi.ca client.

Is Maverick another Linux distro???????

Maverick is the code name for Ubuntu 10.10 which comes out on 10-10-10. All
Ubuntu versions have a number which is the year of release followed by the
month and a code name. It is an alliterative code name. The first word is an
adjective and the second is an animal. Version 10.04 was Lucid Lynx and the
next one will be Maverick Meerkat. It is in beta now. The spring release,
11.04 will be called Natty Narwhal. Most users just go by the descriptor to
keep it short, so I called it Maverick. If you call it Meerkat then you are
correct, but come across as a newbie.

4.10 Warty Warthog 2004-10-20
5.04 Hoary Hedgehog 2005-04-08
5.10 Breezy Badger 2005-10-13
6.06 LTS Dapper Drake 2006-06-01
6.10 Edgy Eft 2006-10-26
7.04 Feisty Fawn 2007-04-19
7.10 Gutsy Gibbon 2007-10-18
8.04 LTS Hardy Heron 2008-04-24
8.10 Intrepid Ibex 2008-10-30
9.04 Jaunty Jackalope 2009-04-23
9.10 Karmic Koala 2009-10-29
10.04 LTS Lucid Lynx 2010-04-29
10.10 Maverick Meerkat 2010-10-10
11.04 Natty Narwhal 2011-04-28

Note that the alphabetical listing started with Dapper since there was no C
after Breezy and that all releases except one (Dapper) have met their target
dates of April (04) and October (10).

Who says that naming a version has to be boring?

As an aside, I like System76's Meerkat desktop. It's on my "to do" list when the
ol' HP goes to the ... well, wherever old compters go when they lose their bits.
(Could that be the dump?)

I'm afraid that Linux is still not ready for prime time. Here's the
problem: The product or service that is first on the scene gets to set
the expectations. Well, not the first, but the first to capture the
public immagination. The Eight bit computers were cheap enough to
capture the imagination of folks who could not afford the more expensive
ones. But they also got people accustomed to what computers could do.

A funny aside is that I used to buy stuff for my Commodores in a toy
store. :-)

Back to why Linux is not yet ready for prime time. The early distros
suffered from not having drivers and such. I gave up on them. By the
time I tried my first Ubuntu distro Linux was more of an option to me
than it had earlier. But I never installed any of the earlier versions.
I did install Ubuntu 10.10. I used a spare HD on my main computer.
[Right now the side panel is off so that I can easily swap hard drives.]
But the 10.10 Ubuntu cannot run lots of av files that are standard in
the PC world. The problem that the johnny come lately's is that we
already have needs and expectations.
Yes, there are many, many apps available that will do the things that PC
apps do. But long time computer users can't/won't just dump their files.
Those who use alternative operating systems and/or hardware like to say
that those who use the mainstream ones are sheep, blindly following the
majority. I say, if you like using those products, find. Don't trash
those who follow the path of least resistance. Better the devil you
know than the devil you don't know.

An interesting discussion, but I can find articles, equally valid,
explaining why microsoft windows is not ready for prime time. It's all a
matter of perspective.

Regarding your issues with being unable to play multimedia files, that
doesn't indicate to me that linux isn't ready for prime time, but that
you didn't properly finish setting up your ubuntu system. If you haven't
installed the ubuntu restricted extras package, for instance, that would
give the odd symptoms you describe.

I've not seen any multimedia file that my ubuntu systems can't play -
and in fact my windows-using friends are often telling me that they
can't play some file or other, and only after I advise them to install
the open source VLC player can they access the same multimedia content
on windows that I can on linux.

If you try to play a media file that your Ubuntu system doesn't have
the right player and/or codec for the file, does Ubuntu ask if you want to
install the right stuff to play it? Or, do you just have to know that you're
supposed to install the "restricted extras" packages?

When I set up my first Ubuntu box, I didn't install the restricted extras. Why
would an average user need or want to install something that's "restricted"?

Restricted in the Linux context has to do with licenses. Because Linux is
open source things are grouped around licensing. In some countries due to
differing laws, using a codec may be legal or illegal. This is true
regardless of the operating system. For example, MP3 is a format owned by a
German company. To play MP3s you need a codec which can be purchased. Most
people do not bother. They bought an MP3 player so they erroneously assume
that this allows them to play them on personal computers. It is the same
with video codecs. Flash is free but it is proprietary and in Windows you
must click on a EULA to use it. When you agree to comply with the license
you can use it. Linux is usually shipped free of software that includes
EULAs. So Ubuntu uses the term restricted to underscore this.

By grouping them together Ubuntu is trying to make it easier to install
them. Some distros such as Mint skirt the issue and just install them. Mint
users of Flash for example have not agreed to abide by the EULA. This is
probably not legal, but has not been challenged. That does not make it
right. I notice that Ubuntu is following suit in the Maverick installer,
although they make a statement that by installing that you agree to any
license agreements to cover themselves.

Basically it is up to the end user to police themselves. There is nothing to
say that any developer won't come down on you for violating their patents.
Some countries do not recognise any software patents. This is mainly for the
US which is leading the crusade on software patents chiefly funded by
Microsoft and the motion picture industry. This is aimed mostly at Europe
and Canada which do not recognise software patents and are considered by the
USA as being hotbeds of piracy as a result.

So next time you see a EULA or are faced with having to download or install
a codec, just remember that this is a huge issue for some people and
companies. It should not be dismissed or ignored because it could come back
to bite you. Many people such as me think that the US is out to lunch and
Congress is in the pockets of big business. See:
en....pedia.org/.../Anti-Counterfeiting_Trade_Agreement
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/

So 'restricted' does not mean that the program won't work? I tried
several of them and they all locked up my computer.

Sounds like hardware problems there. There should be no way any of the
programs in the repos could lock up a computer unless there is something
wrong with the system. I've been running all sorts of programs from
restricted-extras for years (and I'm sure many here can echo the same
experience) and nary a crash.

I'd recommend you run memtest86 and see if RAM errors pop up.

Yes, but the computer works absolutely fine on the Windows hard drive.
So I can't accept hardware as the culprit.

Don't know what to tell you - but if linux and a piece of hardware don't
get along, I would fix or replace the hardware. Then again, that's just
my reaction as someone who's been using linux for long enough that I
know it tends to be extremely stable, unless there are hardware issues.

You say windows is happy, so who knows? maybe ms windows isn't push the
hardware to the same degree, maybe there are components that aren't well
supported in linux, hard to say. I just know that virtually all of the
garden variety office hardware I've installed linux on since the 90s
works just fine. You're really unlucky to have found hardware that
misbehaves only for linux.

At any rate, good luck with microsoft windows!

Surely you jest! Replace my computer because it does not get along with
Linux? Again I say, surely you jest.
It's that kind of thing that keep Linux from ever becoming ready for
prime time. Software will never be able to
get hardware to match the software. Especially when the hardware runs
the computer world.

There are certain parts that just dont work with linux.
Ive had troublesome ones for sure but never an entire pc... well..
except for my older PPC Mac server .. but other than that, Im sure he is
referring to certain parts like.. web cams that just wont work.

That's fine but don't expect anyone, or at least many, to replace a
computer so that they can use Linux. The advantages of Linux besides how
EZ it is to get and install is that one need not get a new computer to
use it.