Non techie making the switch to Linux....
 

Am I crazy or what? I installed Ubuntu 13.04 on my Dell d505 all by myself...and believe me, that was quite an accomplishment for me! I have a lot to learn, but at least I know it! Thanks in advance for all the patience and help.
dpeach777

Welcome to LQ!

The reference I found most useful when I started was Garrels's Intro to Linux: http://www.tldp.org/LDP/intro-linux/html/ (It's also available in PDF and other formats on the "guides" page).

About dot com also has a pretty good Linux section.

Sweet, best wishes and have fun the first link in my signature may also be helpful. :)

Hi! I'm a non-techie as well. Hope you don't mind if I post here to let you know that you're not alone. Ha ha!

That was nice of Wendy101. Kind of the point of a forum like this. You are not alone.

As to crazy??? We will let you know. :) (joking)

Thanks for the kind words everyone! This is a very friendly forum, that's for sure. :-)

Go and get thee immediately to 13.10 or better yet, go to Linux Mint 15 Cinnamon. I've been an Ubuntu user for a long time and 13.04 really disappointed me with all its limitations and omissions. I'm not impressed with its repository, either. Mint is a Gnome and highly stable. It loves beginners and actually coddles them. it is very kin to Ubuntu and is best friends with another distro, Debian. It has a super repository. One nice thing is you can have various types of downoads from a really crunched one to a very friendly and 'homey' one (Cinnamon) to the Swiss Army knife version (MATE). 32 bit or 64. It even has a KDE. Get a book on Linux. You'll find all sorts of information online and there are whole manuals you can get for free. And, if you want some Windows apps there is Wine, an app that lets you have some Windows apps. Its so easy and good I think I'm stealing, but I'm not because none of it belongs to Microsoft. Don't think of Linux as Windows just because it looks like it. Its not at all under the skin. Find out how to "sudo" in the terminal. Lots of tutorials. I can tell you that you may never go back and this is the best and most fun you can have with your shirt on.

Thank you for the encouragement. I have sudoed! I was one of the lucky ones with the notoriously blinking WiFi light' I set up netflix, and screwed up my graphics already!
lol

You are aware that of the 'major' distros, only ubuntu/mint based on ubuntu (and other ubuntu based distros) disables root and forces you to use sudo?

BTW, I'd suggest avoiding ubuntu totally (who likes spyware? canonical, thats who!). Its reputation as a 'easy distro' is from 2004-2006, and now its actually one of the harder distros in many ways (because of how locked down the 'unity' desktop is, etc.)