[Wolves] Newbie questions..

[John Rose]

Ravinder,

I'm not a Sysadmin: I'm a normal (perhaps power) user who knows how to
use the command line but prefers not to use it.

I've tried Fedora (& other Red hat distros). IMO do not use any of them.
I've found them too unstable (i.e. too buggy) compared to the Debian
based distros. 

If you want rock solid, use Debian: disadvantage is that applications
are often behind the times. 

My laptop is 5 years old and I have only used Ubuntu Desktop 32 bit
(without doing a new install of Ubuntu i.e. just upgrading between long
term support versions & updating software on a regular basis). Same
applies to my wife's desktop. Also, I have a Netbook using Ubuntu
Netbook Edition. I've also installed Ubuntu Lucid on friends' computers:
none of them have had any problems. I've just bought a £220 desktop from
Ebuyer and am setting it up as my main machine using Ubuntu Lucid 64
bit: one nasty issue but was resolved. On all my machines, I use
LibreOffice (previously used Open Office) & vlc.

I currently use Ubuntu Lucid on all computers (do not use any later
version) as it's fairly stable, I'm accustomed to the user interface and
it has nearly all applications that I use. I will ignore any offered
upgrade in late April (called Precise) when next long term release comes
out, as I do not want to use new Unity interface. IMO Canonical (authors
of Ubuntu) have suffered a brainstorm in trying to get mouse-based users
onto an interface designed for touchscreen users). Lucid is supported by
upgrades until April 2013. After that, I will upgrade to Precise but
immediately revert to using the existing classic interface. 

Another alternative is Linux Mint which is based on Ubuntu but has extra
software installed (e.g. codecs for playing certain DVDs, Adobe Reader
for when Document Viewer was unreliable at printing pdf files). However,
I prefer Ubuntu's looks (I've previously tried out Linux Mint using
VirtualBox) & am happy to install the few pieces of extra software.

If you want to see Ubuntu Lucid in action, you're welcome to visit my
house.