Yep, right out of the box once you install all of your drivers and applications.

You cannot sit there with a straight face and tell me you have never had a missing DLL.

Don't have to know much in Linux either, the package managers take care of most of it for you.

What attracted me to a different OS than windows,were several factors,including my dislike of Billy Boy...as well i love the idea of having a completly customized OS..
The person above stated that they feel it is not user friendly?? As a beginner is there a basic tutorial on Ubuntu out there? Which might show me what to do once i fire up my new brand new PC with Linux in the CD drive?
Thanks to you, and to everyone

....i am confused? Unbutu looks great,however Mepis looks very user friendly as well.Which of the two would you choose being myself? Remember i am a newb,want an OS for surfing,music and on line schooling..
Thanks

Whichever you are more comfortable with, there is really not one thing that one can do that the other can't.

For Ubuntu this is the best starting point:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/

Never choose a distro because it looks nicely. Choose one because it fits your needs.

I still suggest Mepis, since you will not have to reinstall it every half year, as Ubuntu. Ubuntu has a major version upgrade every half year, and those new versions are not backwards compatible, so you just can't upgrade that simply. The other problem with Ubuntu, that they make a new version available strictly every half year, even if that new version is not finished technically. I mean many bugs are left with every new release.

If we look at Mepis, we will see, that a very careful and long beta testing period comes before a major release. Mepis' current version (7.0) was tested for months. There were 5 betas and 2 RCs before the actual release.

Ubuntu uses a strange user management (can be confusing), what I really hate in that distro. (user and root password the same!) Wow. I still don't understand why is it good. No other distro does like that.

So, considering these new infos I think you can make a better decision.

Here are a few tutorials to learn what linux is about:
http://www.linux-tutorial.info/modul...ent&pageid=224

http://linux-newbie.sunsite.dk/

http://www.linux.org/lessons/beginner/toc.html

They all kind of say the same thing.

They are all about understanding the file structure which is different then windows. And basic command line usage which is sort of like dos.

I would encourage you Dave to be patient. There is lots to learn. Ive been learning linux for just over a year now and am far from being a pro. It took me quite a while to have a feel for what is going on and get everything working on my computer. As elliot678 has stated in a matter of words, once you are familiar with an operating system, it becomes easy. A year ago, I was at where you are now.

LQ had been a great help for me. I learned quite a bit from answers other people have gotten. Once you dive in, there are lots of people to help.

If I could make one last suggestion, both Ubuntu and Mempis should probably work for you. If one doesn't work, you can always reformat your disk and start over. It takes less then an hour to format and install a new distro.

I hope this will help.