Canonical's policy is to release an updated version in April and October
every years. Long Term Support releases come every 2 years in April, i.e.
April 2008, 2010, 2012 etc. They have full, free support from Canonical for
3 years - bug and security fixes and software updates. All normal releases
are considered "Stable" but (obviously) some are better than others and they
get 18 months of full, free support.

Unless you have a huge amount of RAM (3 GB +) the 64 bit version won't make
much difference and the 32 bit versions are a little better supported. I'm
running 64 Bit on one computer and will probably go back to 32 bit next time
as I "only" have 2 GB of RAM and see no benefit to it.

i hav 64 & 32 910 with no problems. i replaced vista on my 5 570z acer
I'm considering installing Ubuntu on the wife's laptop Dell Inspiron
1520 currently running Windows Vista. She keeps having problems with
Vista just shutting down and rebooting and last week her email program
stopped working. It missing a .exe file and will not even open.

I have been running 8.04 on my laptop and love it. The only options I
see on the Ubuntu website is 8.04 or 9.10. 9.10 is not a LTS version
like 8.04. What is the latest LTS version?

My questions are is 9.10 a stable version like the 8.04 I'm use to even
though it is not a LTS, and should I load the 64 bit (since her Dell is
a 64 bit) or stick with the 32 bit for stability. I just want something
stable and easy to use so she will stop complaining about her computer
being messed up.

9.10 isn't a bad version but 10.04 will be better, and will be an LTS
release.

As you know, 10.04 will be released in 10/04, but I'm running the alpha
now and find it quite stable enough for my daily needs. YMMV.

If I were in your place, rather than installing 9.10 I'd wait and
install 10.04 - and I'd stick with the 32 bit version for any desktop
machine unless your desktop is a monster with multiple CPUs and over 4
GB RAM.

I like 64 bit for big servers, but 32 bit is better supported on the
desktop.

I'm currently using 9.4 on 2 machines. I've tried installing 9.10
on 3 different boxes and I have trouble with all 3. I'm sure it was something
to do with the video cards in the 3 machine.
For now I'm sticking to 9.4

9.10 works just fine on one of my Dell laptops.
Installed, booted and done.

I had problems with 8.04LTS. Go figure.

I have both 9.04 and 9.10 installed on my Toshiba laptop and 9.10 remix
on my Acer One notebook.
I have been installing both 9.04 and 9.10 on computers at our local
Library in a very long (one and a half month) install-a-thon.

The new to computers users are happier with Ubuntu than MS Windows,
mostly because they are learning, for the first time, how to use a GUI
system. I have a desktop picture I install as well as bringing the
Tomboy and any application they want to use often to the panel. The
desktop picture has instructions for finding their notes so they don't
forget, a major problem when we learn.

I make sure the Internet connection works on their computers, and
install Thunderbird,VLC, and Ubuntu restricted extras, so they can be
busy watching movies using the DVD player, reading email, and surfing
the web.

I do this because I quiz my new friends, to determine why they bought a
computer to begin with. I then understand what must work out of the
box, so they learn to love Linux from the start.

I also instruct the new users to only buy hardware that states
compatibility with MS products, as well as Mac OSX, so we don't fight
installing new hardware in the future.

I explain how Linux will allow you to dig deep or stay on the surface,
making it the ideal OS for everybody.

I liked 8.04 very much and I would recommend this one. I used 9.04 for some
time, then upgraded to 9.10. both are very good.
I installed an older version of PC/OS OpenWorkstation (based on 8.04) on my
large SATA drive but gave up using XFCE (again) and switched to Openbox as WM
and Thunar as file manager.
Then I wiped out 9.10 from my older hard disk and I made a dual boot with
OpenSolaris and an older version of gOS based on Gutsy Gibbon (I hate gOS
Gadgets) by chainloading that strange UNIX variant. Now I have Internet under
both Ubuntu derivatives and no Internet under OpenSolaris. I am planning to
struggle with Internet configuration under openSolaris whenever I am angry.
Now I am writing from under that bad, old gOS.
I have used lots of Ubuntu derivatives and cannot make a decision which one to
stick to. My PC would be very Linux-friendly with another graphics card.

Just curious. What graphics card?

I don't know who you were directing the "what graphics card" question to. .
. but my MSI Wind U100 which has the flicker problem has an Intel GMA 950.
It's the only computer I have with that issue. It was reported to Canonical
months before the final version was released, but never fixed.
Some blamed MSI but since even beta Lucid works flawlessly on my Wind I see
it as a true bug that should have been resolved and not just 'triaged'.

It was in response to Alexandru's posting. I stripped out the his bit, but I
guess its place was lost in the queue of responses. I am back into Gmail
because I can't make sense of the forum. Too old school for me. Now things
are properly organized when I read them.

Thanks for all the input. I have downloaded 9.10 and burned to a cd. I
will install it today after I look up again how to establish the
separate home partition so if I do an upgrade she want lose any files.

I've spent two days trying to debug her Vista and it is running better
but still slow. The hold has been finding a way to run her vinyl plotter
from Ubuntu. I found some websites saying it is possible just have to
spend the time to understand what they did.

Thanks again. This is a great group, and I don't understand why more
people have not swapped to Ubuntu.

They are! In the last month I have installed on about 10 systems.

I am going to another computer user group tomorrow, and will likely
install on a bunch more, Security is on everyones mind now days.

I will never upgrade (?) to Windows7, Vista or any other MS Operating System
and that's after many years of being an enthusiastic supporter of all things
MS. I can't wait for my XP to be officially no longer supported, at which
time I will become 100% Linux instead of just 4 out of 7 machines. Why not
now? Well, as a retired network administrator I learned long ago, "if it's
not broke, don't fix it", (or maybe I'm just terminally lazy!)

I haven't been able to persuade my girlfriends to make the change but I'm
working on them... to be continued.