LOL!
Can anybody tell me about Linux? Microsoft is starting to bother me, though they haven’t done anything personally to my computer yet.
There's plenty of information on the web about Linux.
Start with these:
There are various "distributions" of Linux which vary in focus and features. The two above, Ubuntu and Mandriva, are very polished and complete desktop distributions. You can download CD or DVD image files (.ISO) for free, which you can then burn onto your own disc(s).
Depending on your hardware and needs, Linux has a very good chance of doing everything you need to do on your PC for free.
That you know of...
That you know of.
Linux as an operating systems comes in different ‘distributions’ (Distro). A Distro is basically just a collection of different software packages like the OS itself (Linux Kernel and GNU Libraries), a ‘windows’ environment, browser, office suite, and other packages. really the difference between two distro’s is usually in the target audience. One might be aimed at power users and has alot of server software (Life RedHat / Fedora / Suse), others are aimed at the desktop and focus more on the look / feel / Ease of use (Ubuntu / Mandriva).
One of the most user friendly distro’s is Ubunu which can be downloaded here (http://www.ubuntu.com/) Download it, burn it to a cd and start your computer up. It should boot off the CD and bring up ubuntu, you can try it out like this without uninstalling windows. To get back to windows simply restart the computer (taking out the CD which should eject when you run shutdown)
If you like what you see you can install off of the same CD.
Incidentally, if you are a gamer Linux will likely not be for you, while there are ways to run some windows software under Linux it tends to affect performance enough to bother gamers (if it will run at all).
I use Kubuntu 7.04 Linux at home and love it. (Some say Ubuntu is more Mac-like, Kubuntu Windows-like.)
Let's start with the downsides:
1) Help is frequently poor, often "expert-friendly." This is improving and there are online forums for assistance -- I have often found answers there.
2) Drivers for some devices are not available, buggy, or require "experts" to install (mostly due to steps it writer assumed the reader would know). The last is helped by checking the forums again, the middle tends to resolve itself in time: the flaky Kubuntu 6.06 driver for my Lexmark printer is not available in 7.04; switched to a supported HP and it all works well!
3) Software. There's not a lot being sold for Linux -- and your Windows software might or might not run in a Windows emulator.
4) System tools. Kubuntu 7.04 has some excellent tools, but their usage is not always clear (see #1). This is improving dramatically.
Upsides:
1) Software! There's a LOT available for free, and a package manager (think Add/Remove Software) to manage what you've installed or want to uninstall. I use a graphics image program called The GIMP -- on Windows and Linux. World's least intuitive UI (I had to buy a book), but I am told as powerful as Photo$hop.
I'm not expert but I have played with a lot of different distributions over the past 10 years; Linux has come a long ways and just seems to be getting better.