As a relative newbie and techno ludite I can only go of my own seemingly ignorant experience.
I loaded Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Kaola) on to my elderly (6 Years) PC after wiping the hdd clean. The install was easy and the instructions simple to follow, even for me.
Getting on line wirelessly was simplicity itself.
Everything appears to be working fine, and I've even reinstalled all my little favourite programs that I used previously. I have since used Bluetooth and that works perfectly ... as opposed to Ubuntu 8.10 where Bluetooth never functioned ... perhaps due to my inexperience and inability to find a solution to the problem. Having said that, I did have teething trouble with USB ports and sockets. The Firefox browser (3.5) kept freezing until I swapped the USB's around and then the whole thing settled down and it's been okay now for the last 3 days (touch wood). Anyway, my experience with Karmic Kaola has been thus far satisfactory ... lets hope it stays that way.

I messed around with my old distro so I messed up a few things like my screen. It wasn't full screen and when I updated 9.10 fixed that and now I have full screen again. So it's pretty amazing..Love it

A not so great release out of the box. I had a bad experience with wireless and some applications have funny little issues they didn't have before. It is pretty stable once you get it up and running and looks like about every other release of Ubuntu. Kind of feels like they tried to toss in all of the latest and greatest stuff without making sure it all played nicely together. (Why is Ubuntu One dependent on the Gnome Network Manager...?) Could be much better.

Ideal For Begginners. Slow, but way faster than M$.

As they say' works for me' :-)

Using it on my PC and on around thirty PCs at my institute. It works nicely on cutting edge as well as run of the mill PC. In my case its working on my dual quad cores, my wife's Phenom and my Vaio laptop. I do avoid ATI video cards as I am aware that their drivers are the bane of any linux based system.

Maybe I am not in the loop enough, but some things just don't work right, and it takes an enormous effort to get around it. I reported the problems at launchpad and some other forums with no response whatsoever. None. This is a 64 bit, brand new system, but the hardware was purchased to support Linux.

1) X. Intermittently, it just takes about 5 minutes to log in, and nothing responds to mouse clicks (this am AMD quadcore system with 4G RAM). My only option is C-M-F1, and restart gdm.

2) Webcamera. Apparently there is a kernel/v4l bug which gives access to the camera only to root. The bug seems to have been fixed in Debian back in August---and this is November.

3)Skype. It has to be loaded with a preloader and a compatibilty package.

4) Printing. I could never make my Stylus-CX8400 work. It prints blank pages.

5) Youtube (flash). An environment variable has to be set/unset otherwise you cannot click on icons to start movies.

I hate to be negative, for I have been using Linux for 15 years with great satisfaction, but this is the first time my kids asked me "why do you have to run this Linux thing if even you cannot make it work right?".

I downloaded Ubuntu 9.10 and installed it on the partition of my computer that had previously been the home of Ubuntu 8.04. The installation instructions were very straight forward and it installed cleanly. Customizing the appearance seemed easier this time around and there were more default options. There are plenty of applications to download and use.

I did have issues installing the wireless driver and am still in the process of getting that to work. I had had issues with the wireless driver installation on the previous version, but was able to get it installed and working; however, using similar steps do not seem to be working on 9.10.

Overall, a great OS that I would recommend to anyone, but due to the wireless issue I am experiencing, I give it an 8.

Overall a great release,
Was initially put off by the sound problems in openarena and other games being broken but then after upgrading ALSA all the problems have gone

On all systems i have used it on i have had no problems with any drivers or setup, it did take a bit of a push to get my dual screens working on an Nvidia card but that isn't karmics fault

This is my fourth Ubuntu release and it is my everyday desktop at home. Each release is better than the last.

I was not happy with the extra configuration work needed to get sound working correctly for everything, but it's all good now.

The support community is great and the distro is used widely enough that almost any problem can be solved within the first two or three pages on a Google search.

my printer has issues, and all (3) of my web cams are now paper weights.
ubuntu is going down in quality and usability. i am now reloading and installing u-8.04.
i hope canonical (joke name, in the least)will provide a suitable realease for real, this next time. it seems they are determined to screw up a good thing
. MHO

Loaded effortlessly on my Asus EEEPC 1005HA and everything seems to work right "out of the box." I believe this would be an excellent first distro for anyone thinking about trying out Linux.

worked right from the start, only problem I have had is that you have to put a memory into the inbuilt card reader (Acer Aspire One netbook ) before you switch on for the system to see it. all other ports I've tried work

well, I am a very new user of linux. I have never used anything so easy. even windows gave me more problems than linux. so far so good. if there are any bugs......other than the obvious wi-fi issue..... no problems.

Unfortunatly Canonical has put Karmic in an unstable repository branch. The pro is that most hardware has full support, even wifi works on most laptops but on the other side many crash reports have been posted (also from one of my own machines over here has this problem). X hangs up freezing the entire machine, forcing the unexperienced user to switch off the computer and back on. In the next release they will return to the testing branch and I expect Ubuntu will get an 8 or 9 then if Canonical continues their good work.

My good network card doesnt work (but it is now crashing vista so...). Some files are a little tricky to install.

overall great

New to linux system,Initialy Running Win7,

Installed Ubuntu 9.10 with DualBoot option 1st time no issues,All hardware found and installed.Not used Win 7 since (2 weeks now).Very impressed

Ubuntu is really easy to install and there are a lot of modern features, like cross-plattform gaming for eg. It is so easy installing a graphic card, when on other distros (I don't make name's Deborah and Ian :)) it is quite hard.

I really liked working with it, but I was annoyed by freezes, when running more than 4 apps.

Unfortunately, I still use dial-up. In an attempt to get this working I read that I have to download a package to use dial-up. How stupid is that? How do I download it if I don't have my connection?

I'm new to linux after having used Windows many flavors over many years, got disgruntled with Windows security problems so decided to switch to Linux. I did some research and decided to use Linux Mint 8 this is a uBuntu based Linux.
The only problem I have had is with the outboard camera, I searched through the forums and found part solution to the problem with an application called "CHEESE" I can now use my on-board camera for photos and video as yet not able to get it to work as web cam.

Overall this distro is great.

I make a test .

I am using it as my second OS.
I like the free software support!

Overheats my laptop (Centrino Duo 1.83 Ghz with 2 GB RAM)

Crashes my Core 2 Duo 3.06 GHz with 4GB RAM, for no reason!

NOT RECOMMENDED AT ALL. Use Fedora 12 instead. 5 months (uptime of 138 days on my server) and still working.

After 2 Windows blue screens of death (for the zillionth time), I finally switched to Linux permanently and this time no double boot. Since I have hardly any Linux experience and Ubuntu was praised as beginner's friendly, it seemed the obvious choice. And, indeed, installation went smoothly and also, the daily operation is without serious problems, well sort of. There have been - and still are - sound problems. At the time, it runs relatively stable, but don't ask me what it took, to arrive there, I wouldn't be able to reconstruct the process. From time to time, sound still disappears with VLC, but at least I am now able to bring it back without rebooting. My Samsung networked color laser multifunction printer still doesn't work (although it was sold as having Linux drivers). Well, it prints and maybe it also scans, if connected via USB, but it doesn't scan when used as a network device (what it is sold for). This is, of course, not an Ubuntu, but a general Linux problem and I think that the Linux community should much more aggressively pursue vendors that refuse to properly give Linux support for their products. A boycot seems appropriate. Further problems: if you want to use software, that is not directly supported by Ubuntu, it becomes very messy, at least if you are a beginner like me. I tried to install X-plane on my 64-bit system ... well, I am still trying. Installing software is something that should be made much, much easier, if Ubuntu (and Linux) should ever hope to beat Windows. There is no way that any run-of-the-mill user will ever succeed in getting something running that is not officially supported.

First of all I DO NOT pay for software. Never have, never will.
For a number of year I used Windows as my desktop. I tried them all Gnome on Solaris, Red Hat desktop. this and that but I always found myself migrating back to windows because it was just familiar to me. I was used to it. Well, one day I decided to try Ubuntu's desktop on my laptop. I cranked down the "wubi" and put it on another patition. Well I have to tell you I was NEVER so impressed with an OS install. It only asked me about 5 questions. Windows asks 5 question before it boots. It installed in about 20 minutes, just in time to finish my lunch. IT JUST WORKS. Everything worked. It was the most pleasant experience I have ever had installing any OS and I've probably installed hundreds of machines. Very very Impressive. It started using it and only am forced to use Vista at work. Vista, patuey, nothing but questions. Your the damn computer, you figure it out.

i want ubuntu 9.10 en español

With file & crash disasters with an early Version of Vista, and Microsoft Works I decided to investigate open source. I got Open Office for Windows from a magazine disc and loved it. It even got the data from corrupted MS files that MS programs couldn't. So I ventured into dual-boot Ubuntu. Took ages just to get internet working (still not sure how I did it). Never got printer working. Upgraded to V9.10, lost internet again. I give up. I'm not a game player or nerd. I'm self-employed and need reliable software for my business. This has cost me way too much time.

The best Linux that I have installed yet. I have even used it to rescue my windows partition from viruses. There are a few things that I still need windows for. But about 99% of the time It's Ubuntu 9.10 !!!