Ubuntu?

know

Windows has more support for applications and games


Most ppl use Windows , never had linux , but i heard Linux is more stable than Windows (thats why most ET servers are Linux i think)

I suggest you ask ng_ or someone who is incredibly good with and used to Linux.

The thing with linux is the great deal of control you have over it.

One simple example. There are two very popular window managers (by choosing ubuntu you automatically choose gnome, but there's kubuntu with kde as well), and you can use whichever you like best. You decide.

You can also decide which distribution to choose (which one suits you best?) and even whether to install your programs from sources or from precompiled binaries.

To move on, someone with better computer skills, has great benefit from the very things that scare away newbies: configuration files and the command line. Linux basically revolves around scripts, and scripts are extremely powerful. Everything is configurable, and there might also be more than one way of doing it. In addition to that, the command line allows you to do what you want (if you know how) a lot faster than click-ing your way around.

Let's now consider another approach. Governments and agencies started making their switch to linux and open formats. Considering MS Office vs Open Office. If someone keeps all it's documents in a closed format (like .doc from MS Word), it means it puts a great deal of trust into the owner of the format. If Microsoft decides not to support the old format anymore, all your documents are doomed (ofc, in this case you will have the chance of converting them). If however you use an open format, with all the specifications made public, there will always be support for it somewhere on the internet (maybe even older versions: you can find Apache 1.0 out there, but can you find Microsoft Office 6.0? )

Update 1:
And most the software you'll ever need is compiled into one big list with nice descriptions, and you can download and install it with less than 3 clicks.

Initially I heard of Ubuntu from a programmer who lavished praise on it, and so when I ran into technical difficulties with my copy of Windows XP, I decided to give it a try. I have stuck with it ever since, and I have been very impressed by the improvements that have been made to the operating system since I started using it.

I mostly use Ubuntu for office applications and such (had ET installed on it at one time but experienced difficulties with the keyboard functionality, unfortunately). I like to use Ubuntu for a variety of reasons: it features easy package management that allows you to download and install a lot of free programs painlessly, all the drivers for my hardware are installed at the same time as the operating system (I think I'm fortunate not to have experienced any problems in this regard), and it comes with a wide range of useful programs pre-installed (e.g. Firefox, OpenOffice, GIMP (graphics application), Evolution (for e-mails), Rhythmbox (for managing music, podcasts and such)).

Speaking as someone relatively new to Linux, I consider Ubuntu a pretty good alternative to XP if you aren't very dependent on software designed exclusively for XP/Mac (though it is possible to achieve support for such applications through an API called "Wine", but not always with perfect compatibility).

If you are lucky, you are quickly up and running after you've installed Ubuntu, and if not, support is widely available on the web since it is such a popular distribution, so a transition from XP to Ubuntu should be relatively painless.

I currently have Ubuntu 7.04 installed on both my desktop (dual boot) and my laptop, and I am very satisfied with how it runs (although I have experienced some difficulty with the touch pad functionality on my laptop (it worked fine, but I found it hard to configure to my liking)).

ubuntu rulz.

levz sucks cocks.

Because its free :o