Do You Ubuntu ?

Finally got off my lazy butt and decided to install a version of Linux on my old computer. Not my good machine, or The Dell (sometimes with scorn ) as I call it , but the old second hand box I purchased way ...way ... back at the beginning of this blog that gave me issues. PROBLEMCHILD is what I named it.

So I downloaded the ISO , thats a disk image , and some special software to burn it to a cd, and discovered I was out of cd's. Sigh.... off to work the next day , pick up some cd's on the way in , work all day , go home..forget it go to bed.
get up , ,play a little world of warcraft...ah ..might as well get something useful accomplished today , burn the iso to the cd ( I used a really slow setting to make sure there would be no data corruption) and then switched all the wires over to my old computer. (I'm using the same monitor and mouse, and internet connection, so only one comptuer goes at a time)
Why did I choose the Ubuntu version of Linux ? Pure chance really , I just picked one at random from a list and it claimed to be reasonably friendly.
First problem came during the installation. The software switched me to 800 by 600 for my screen resolution , and you could just see the tips of some buttons at the bottom right. Presumably the very last , very right most button was the next button , and I could just barely click on it... so I did manage to install Ubuntu, but this bit about screens too large for my screen resolution would continue to plague me throughout the day.
Since I'd long planned on installing linux , I'd used ProblemChild as a kind of test bed , and downloaded limeware and sharebear and all sorts of programs I knew would infect my computer with trojens and virii, so I chose the install option to completely wipe out the system and install Ubuntu fresh.
The installation went off without a hitch, and after a reboot I was looking at ... some kind of windowed environment strange to me. Apparently it was called the Gnome Desktop, you clicked on menu's and double clicked on icons much like in windows, except that everything was laid out a lot differently.

Bonus #1 : It comes with an office suite : A word processor , a spread sheet , a database, a power point look alike. And these arn't the 30 day trials have your credit card ready that came with my dell, these ones you keep forever , keep your money in your pocket.
Bonus #2 : It can install other applications from the internet. The list is extensive and all you do is double click on one. I tested it out with a second spread sheet program called gnumeric, and it installed all by it's self without me having to know anything or do much at all.
So we're talking tons of clean ,non virus infected software free of charge
Bonus #3 : I'm writing this blog entry on firefox 2 , which came with Ubuntu , and seems to be working fine.

Note to self : get a video box to switch the monitor back and forth at the flip of a switch , I already have two keyboards and two mice ....

Drawback #1 : World of Warcraft doesn't run on Linux. :(

Looks like I'm going to be running two systems...now to just make switching between them easy.