The Glade 4.0

I am making my first post from it right now. So far... it seems like it will take a bit of getting used to, but I like it

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Darksiege
Traveller, Calé, Whisperer
Lead me not into temptation; for I know a shortcut

Now... I have loaded it onto my old laptop, it is a POS laptop that is dying a slow and painful death.

Will I be jeopardizing my good system's Windows Integrity if I load Ubuntu onto my good laptop?

And people told me to look into the following programs for it also, I am hoping someone can confirm or deny these:

Beryl
Nessus Network Scanner
NMAP
Aircrack - NG
Metasploit
Wireshark (I already use this for work)
Cain and Abel
IP Changer
Bluefish
Compliz
Wine

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Darksiege
Traveller, Calé, Whisperer
Lead me not into temptation; for I know a shortcut

Ubuntu is worse than Windows as your personal computer. Be warned. It's better in some respects but on the whole is worse (unless you've been using Ubuntu for years and know it like the back of your hand). I have it now and plan on getting rid of it for Windows again. I'm not a Linux noob either.

Yes you will jeopardize Windows if you load Ubuntu on the same machine. You'd be writing over the partition.

Beryl is defunct, it rolled back into Compiz.
For the rest, what is it you are wanting to do with your system?

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Dunno. I am a Linux n00b.

I want to learn the OS. I want to see how hard it is to run some of my windows programs inside of it... (specifically WoW and some of the kids games/Apps like Wizards 101)

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Darksiege
Traveller, Calé, Whisperer
Lead me not into temptation; for I know a shortcut

Most of the stuff you listed there are network tools of various kinds (which is really Linux' strength).

If you are wanting to take it for a spin as your daily driver, try setting up open office and get a printer working. Install and set up your favorite browser (chrome/firefox), get a media player going (VLC?)... stuff like that.

Just an opinion. Every effort I've made to try any flavor of Linux as a desktop has turned out to be a complete waste of time.

If you are looking to learn the platform for use as a network troubleshooting tool, learn to use the CLI, and how to do basic configuration stuff that way. Add interfaces, routes, run traces and do captures, etc...

The best (and really only) personal use I ever found for Linux was putting a NIC into promiscuous mode and capturing Client/Server packets while playing EQ. That was dern'd handy, and kinda fun too. =)

And I thought I was the only one.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

My experience has been that if you want to use your Linux box for a specific purpose, it's excellent. If you want to use linux for a desktop "catch-all" operating system? It kind of sucks.

So I've been thinking of how best to respond. I have been using various flavors of Linux for over 12 years (and some experimentation in college, heh). I have compiled my own kernel, I have compiled my own X, etc. Due to my experience with the OS, the problems that a lot of people claim to have, I don't. In a lot of cases, the identification of software equivalents is the big reason I don't have the problems. In a comparatively few cases, my familiarity with the guts of the system allows me to overcome the trickier problems. Linux is perfectly fine as a desktop system, as long as you understand that it is not a Windows world. This is the real sticking point for most people. Linux is scary in its options. Have you poked around in Synaptic to see what all you might want to play with? Daunting, isn't it? There's a veritable ton of software freely available to install to do anything you can think of. Which of it is good? In many cases, even I can't tell you. This is why the question of "what do you want to do with your system" is so important. The package groups for "I want a desktop system" are well known and, although there's some differences depending on whether you want to work under a Gnome or a KDE look-and-feel, not too tricky to figure out. The package groups for "I want a dev station" are also extremely well known. The package groups for other scenarios are perhaps not as easily determined. There are people who are more than happy to volunteer information, though, as long as you can find them. But that's where it falls down. The average user doesn't want to have to know more than the minimum to use their system. This is why Internet Explorer is the top browser by market share, and also why anti-virus is a major industry. So that's recognizably a bad thing, but there's no test to determine fit ownership of a computer, nor a benchmark of expertise to be allowed on the internet. However, this is going a bit away from the topic.

The short of it is, there's a lot of possibilities with Linux, but you need to have an idea of what you want to do.

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Firefox beats Internet Explorer in Europe
http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/04/fire ... -at-least/

European users have a certain condition that applies to Microsoft Windows and web browsers. Do you know what it is?

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I'm guessing it's because the anti-trust and monopoly lawsuits filed against Microsoft in Europe actually resulted in a decision that had a real effect, rather than the dog and pony show the DoJ launched in the late 90s in the United States?

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

This seems counter productive to me. The reason I'm interested in Ubuntu, or Linux in general is beacuse of the whole free software thing. YMMV.

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"...the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Bittorrent and Hotfile.com and Cygwin.