Having a linux live CD on-hand is something I recommend to most everyone. If you're ever unlucky enough to have a hard drive fail on you, you can still run a live CD and perform most basic computing tasks until you install a new hard drive. I did it for about a month; a friend went about two sans hard drive.

Right now I run a dual boot machine with XP. Not a bad option if your hardware isn't more than 5 years old and you want an accurate test drive for linux--the live CD doesn't perform nearly as well in my experience. There are many step-by-step tutorials available for this kind of setup and I found installation not too-difficult.

A clean install for Ubuntu can be done from a live CD pretty easily in most cases. I've run Ubuntu on a few machines and I've never had any hardware issues. The biggest problem I've had so far is watching DVDs, but this is a copyright issue for linux users and not a hardware problem. If you're comfortable with what's included with Ubuntu (it comes with a lot of practical software) the system should be a very good alternative to a buggy Windows system. It's very stable and it runs fast. Installing new programs is where things get sticky for linux newbies.

I once read about something you could download that makes The Gimp run more like Photoshop (if that's a big deal), but I've never looked into it.

hi tommy, we met in Aberdeen briefly when i was playing with crevecouer. my advice would be do it - i just put ubuntu onto an old machine and i think it's ace. I definitely qualify as a beginner, normally i just have to look at a computer and it breaks, but ubuntu has been a piece of piss to get my head around. as far as itunes and photoshop go, there are equvalents - i actually found gimp easier to work than photshop, but i wasn't doing anything too advanced (the photoshop like programme is called gimpshop). The best thing for me is the security - knowing that i'm not being spied on by microsoft or vulnerable to any viruses or spyware or owt. All this is without getting into the political/ethical side of it too...

Unless you are a math nerd and want the highest possible PARI-GP benchmarks or otherwise want 64 bit support for some sick reason, don't use the 64 bit version of Ubuntu. It works OK, and has better support for hardware than any 64 bit windows I've seen, but I have a lot of problems with Java, and flash is unstable and a pain to set up. I think I'll try Gentoo some time and see if that helps my other instabilities.

I'd imagine 32 bit Ubuntu to be all good, but LiveCD first.

seth wrote:hi tommy, we met in Aberdeen briefly when i was playing with crevecouer.

I remember it well. That was a fantastic show. I'm wearing my Crëvecoeur shirt right now.

Thanks for the advice, I'm just going to go for it and see if it works out.

If money is the main issue, you can find original, fully-licensed, unopened Win XP disks on Ebay for like $50-60.