There is lots in this to deal with and you give us little to help you with.

First of all you tell us nothing about your hardware. Operating systems work
better or worse on certain hardware. Most hardware that was made to work
with Windows works well with Linux, but some does not. People here have
different hardware and if you tell us what yours is then they can give more
input since they can identify with your problem or not.

Installed Ubuntu over a month ago: Which version? There are several you can
download install
32-bit or 64-bit (it makes a difference with multimedia)

Do not say that you did not have this problem in XP. You are not in XP so
you cannot expect things to be the same. Linux is an alternative to Windows
and not a clone.

To get multimedia playback to work in Ubuntu you should install
ubuntu-restricted-extras and ubuntu-restricted-addons. Both are in the
repositories. You can use Software Centre. Just search for Ubuntu
restricted.

Skype works in Ubuntu. I use it and many here will as well. Many podcasters
use it to broadcast their podcasts for Linux users. There are sources to
problems so we need to know what yours are. Can't install, can get sound,
can't get video, etc.

The site in the last part is in Russian which I cannot read. I could not
replicate your problem (whatever it was). Do not worry about malware. Never
give your password to install something if you are even remotely
suspicious. If you do not login as root and if you keep your password safe
and do not give it out freely then you are usually safe. A good plan is ever
to install anything outside of the repositories until you are well
established in Linux. Do not search the net for file and do not install
anything without using the Software Centre or Synaptic or apt-get.

I hope this will help. I have a Dell Dimension 2400, 32 bit. I had Ubuntu
11.04 but upgraded to 11.10 today. I do realize Linux is not a clone but I do
expect it to work. Maybe part of it is me. I changed to Linux for a reason
that hopefully the grass is greener here. I do not give my login info away. I
get the Russian site when I go to this site, which I believe is ligit and click
on the contact/comments button. I only have one computer so cannot check it
out. Maybe someone else can check this by clicking on this link and then the
contact/comment button.
http://www.inlineplanet.com/#

Since you have 11.04 working then it may well be just a bad upgrade to
11.10 - you'll read in here and on any Ubuntu help sites that it's a
bit of 'pot-luck' at times whether an upgrade goes cleanly or not, and
generally the more you update the greater the chance of it all going
horribly wrong :-(

In general, hassle that it is a clean install is always preferred and
that goes for any OS - not just Ubuntu.

I'd really recommend that you do a clean install of 11.10 to verify
whether your problems are due to the new version or not. Ubuntu is
good on old hardware but there are major changes going on and some
older gear is going to struggle unfortunately. The Dimension 2400 is
pretty long in the tooth in computer terms :-(

Upgrades can go bad in any OS. They may seem more frequent in Ubuntu
because it comes out every six months so there are more of them. That
being said, I hate upgrades and always opt for a clean installation.
There is lots of cruft that can get left behind and make life
miserable even if things upgrade properly. However, the biggest reason
that I hate upgrades is that I do not stick with a stock Ubuntu
release. I have everything posible installed and use lots of outside
sources (PPAs). In my case, the chances of a successful upgrade are
almost nil.

My comment about comparing OSes is important. You are in a new
environment and need to respect the OS if you are to get help and not
rankle cranky old users like me. Linux is nearly as old as Windows and
is older if you look at Unix at its roots. It has maintained a
separate path since day one and has never sought to be LIKE Windows.
It has its own file system and way of doing things. Implicit in saying
it worked in Windows is to cast blame. It does not work therefore is a
Linux problem. In fact, the problem goes much deeper. The hardware was
made to work on Windows. Microsoft did not have to do anything to get
it to work. In the case of Linux, developers had to work hard to
backwards engineer almost everything. The fact that it works at all
should be surprising. You cannot run Mac OS easily on a PC either.
That is a testimony to the Linux community. To make comparisons when
unmerited and unwanted is not the way to integrate into the community.
If I moved to the US and went around saying that it was better in ___
(another country) or it is not the way it is done in ___, then I would
quickly be told to go back to where I came from. Windows is Windows
and Linux is Linux.Whether one is better or not depends on which side
of the fence you are. I prefer to keep them separate because making
comparisons frequently leads to fruitless discussions, flame wars and
bashing which is why I mentioned it.

If something works in Widows there is a reason. It was made to work in
it. If it does not work in Linux, there is a reason. It was not made
to work in Linux.However, most hardware can be made to work in Linux,
which is where the community comes in handy.

Now that you have shared a bit more, people can now start
contributing. They have information and that is key to resolving any
problem. Otherwise we are shooting in the dark and it can lead you
down many paths and waste your time and ours before you hit on a
solution.

I am outspoken and do not mean to offend. I could just stick to giving
answers, but think that we have a larger responsibility to the
community to educate new users to the Linux way. So I tend to be picky
and you will learn this about me in time

Well put - and something that all Linux users should be aware of.

Windows has had a captive market in the desktop for many years and
this has inevitably resulted in a skewing of the hardware / software
market in its favour. Things are changing slowly but even so there is
no point bemoaning the fact or wishing change would arrive sooner. We
have an excellent product in Ubuntu of all flavours which frees us
from the threat of malware and costs us nothing more than our time and
patience - the niggles we can live with or work around / get help
overcoming

I appreciate your input. I do understand that Windows and Linux are separate.
I just want something that works or figure out how to make it work and that is
why I wrote.

I know that, but Linux is about community which means understanding others.
Windows is a mono culture and Windows-centric. Linux is multicultural. It is
also a divided house with so many distros each with its partisanship and the
whole split between GNU and Linux and Free software and Open Source. When
Windows users enter they need to know a bit about what they are getting into
or you can get spooked. Linux users unite in one thing. They are proud of
Linux and what it has accomplished which not seem like much to Windows users
who have 90% of the market, but Linux has no marketing branch, no
leadership, no software in boxes, no advertising budget. So when many long
time Linux users hear about Windows and comparisons it is like finger nails
on a chalkboard. So it was more like a heads up than an admonition .

The part about getting it to work I also get. I went through that stage.
There is a learning curve even with Windows. Windows users forget that they
once felt intimidated by Windows, even though MS has made things soft for
users re: security and administration. Windows users have paid a price by
having to add extras like AV, anti this and that which Linux users do not.
It is just taken for granted that Windows is easier and people forget and
forgive all Windows' flaws. I don't want to debate those here. I just want
to remind people (not just you but other readers) that we are speaking of
two different beasts and comparisons do not work.

Getting things to work in Linux is both easy and hard. It is easy when
things go right. Even easier than Windows. No drivers disks, etc. It is
harder when things do not work out because you are in an unfamiliar
environment and do not know where to look, are afraid to break things and
are being prompted for your password for anything serious which only makes
users more anxious. We've all been there. All I can say as you become
familiar with something what once seemed hard becomes easy.

Another aspect of Linux is also both good and bad. We have community support
which is good, but the amount of information, the variety and quality varies
greatly. That can be intimidating in the least and overwhelming at worst. It
scares some users away. Ask one question and you will get ten answers which
can be due to how you asked the question (your mistake) to how it was taken
(adviser's mistake) Then you will get a variety of solutions which can all
be right or none. You can get commandline help or GUI help. Nobody said it
would be easy. However, it is much easier than in the old days. ;)

I don't think it's hardware compatibility.

I used a Dimension 2400 (1 GB RAM) as my primary desktop for several years.
It's not an ideal Ubuntu platform: the ancient Intel Integrated Graphics chipset
is poorly supported in newer Linux kernels. Ubuntu 8.04 was rock-solid, but
8.10, 9.04, 9.10, and 10.04 were either unbootable, or crashed frequently.

10.10 was rock-solid. I didn't install 11.04, but the live CD seemed OK. (I've
since retired the machine.)

I never had any problems that remotely resembled the ones you report. Take that
for what it's worth. How's your RAM?

The WOT Scorecard had no rating, so it's fairly new, but the picture of the
website mentions inline skating. The first page using Google search on Ubuntu
10.10 doesn't show that website as a choice. I had no reason to be curious about
it...

That is the page I wanted. In the upper right hand corner of the page, I
clicked on the contact button and a popup came up called comments or something
like that ( there were 2 choices ). I tried both choices and each time I got
the Russian site, which seems to be a search engine. It did not have anything
to do with contacting someone about skating.

Got it - the links in that contacts option are to send by e-mail which
will ask which service you'd like to use. Yandex is a Russian Web Mail
client and when I set the page to use that I too get that pop-up which
is asking me to log into a Yandex account. Now that I've done this,
every 'Mailto link in Opera will try to use Yandex !! To clear, I go
into preferences and reset the Mailto option - simples tavarich

Interesting that you found 10.10 to be stable on the 2400 - had a
run-in with one of those and no way would it accept 10.04 but that was
before 10.10 was out so couldn't try that. All goes to underline that
there has to be a point at which older hardware has to be left behind
if the OS is to develop.

I knew some russian but I forgot most of it. Yandex seems to be a portal with
various links. It is a news portal, seemingly. Surely has nothing to do with
Ubuntu or Linux. Inlineplanet is even more ridiculous.
I will have to navigate through the Russian site.

I am sure that you are up to it, better than I. I am linguistically
challenged.

I have about a gig of RAM.............

1 GB should be plenty for Ubuntu on a Dimension 2400.

Just one more hardware-related thought: Do you have the newest BIOS firmware?
(Downloadable from the Dell Support website.) My habit, when rehabilitating a
new-to-me computer (usually somebody else's discard) is to start with the latest
BIOS available from the manufacturer.

Thanks for the reply. The first thing we did was get a new BIOS in this
computer.( I have another that we tried to install the BIOS but it would not
install.) Actually, this computer has 1.2 GB of RAM.

To tackle just your first issue: what kind of documents are you downloading?
If they are MS Word compatible they should open in Libre Office. If they are
pdf files Okular, and several other (K)Ubuntu apps will open them. Plain
text files open in Kate and other notepad-like apps.

There is always the possibility that the files are corrupted or that they
contain Windows viruses. Viruses wont affect your Ubuntu installation but
they wont open either.

Do you have a recent version of Ubuntu? Current one is 11.10, nicknamed
"Oneiric", which was released this month. The current long-term support
edition is 10.04, released in April 2010. Don't use anything earlier.

Did you click on the link to make yandex.ru your home page, as they
helpfully suggest? If so you will have to find the place in your browser
where you set the home page and default search engine and change them. Its a
little different for each browser but it is there buried somewhere deep in
the menus.

It depends on the browser. In Chrome or Chromium, go to the wrench icon at
top right, choose Preferences and set the home page in the new windows on
the line that says Home Page. In Firefox go to the menu and look under Edit,
Preferences and click on the General tab, top left. Then type in your new
home page or cut and paste. If you navigate there before you set the home
page you can click on use current. Handy. In Opera it is in the menu under
Tools, Preferences. In Rekonq you click on the wrench at the top and at the
top click on General and go to Home Page url. In Konqueror it is in the menu
under Settings, Configure Konqueror, General.

So many browsers. So much fun! I often have 3 or 4 different ones open at
once.