Ubuntu, Round 2

Well, that went a bit better. I've reinstalled Ubuntu again, version 7.04, and it's running better than last time. I've even got it to a point of usability. Thanks to my experience with MAC installation recently and some web help, it was less daunting this time around. It still is quite misrepresented as something that can be easily used "out of the box". However, with a little work, it becomes usable pretty quick. The Synaptic Package Manager is a pretty slick way of downloading and installing programs once you get the hang of it. I removed the Firefox that came with, and downloaded and installed the Firefox straight from the official website. It seems pretty stable, and so does the Thunderbird that I installed as well. I added VLC and MPlayer and somehow added some codec packs as well, and so now my media files actually play too. The included picture utilities are really pretty good (I like Eye for GNOME already), and of course OpenOffice is there ready to go as well. I also installed aMSN for a messenger clone, and though I haven't tested it out yet, the setup looks good. Still got some major issues with font size and clarity in Firefox / Thunderbird, but I'll try to sort that out later. Some of the WMV files I played didn't look right either, so maybe there's a problem with my video card recognition. It's an old card. So, no crashes yet (I'm staying away from the Evolution program this time), and once I figure out CD/DVD burning and video transcoding, it'll be at a major usable state. My bookmarks are up in Firefox and I'm sending messages from Thunderbird, so on the surface it looks pretty good. It still won't let me write to certain folders or access the root for anything (regardless of password), so that may pose a major problem yet. All in all though, not bad for a free operating system. Just have to roll up your sleeves, slog through the help forums, and hope for the best. 'Course, it helps if you are familiar in any way with a MAC architecture. I think thats what helped me in round 2 here. It's not as good as MAC software for ease of use, but pretty downright impressive for free stuff.