Is this Computer and Hardware suitable as a decent Linux Machine
 

I am thinking of purchasing the following machine for Home and load Ubuntu Linux. This would be the biggest decision I have made in support of the Linux OS. I was in IT on the Network Admin side. As of 10 years ago I held my CCNA, CNE, and various Microsoft certs but not the MCSE. I changed careers since.
What I need this to do without much change to standard Installation is watch video services such as Netflix, HBO Go, and other similar sites. I also enjoy listening to music through my computer. I don't game. I do videoconferencing. Any other questions a newbie should consider please advise. Here is a link to the machine. My one change will be switching to a solid state drive.

http://www.walmart.com/ip/Dell-Refur...ingMethod=p13n

This machine will run Linux fine. The one change I would recommend is to buy a SSD in addition to a hard drive rather than buying a SSD in lieu of a hard drive. This machine will probably pick up some speed by having two hard drive/SSD paths running in parallel.

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Steve Stites

I agree with jailbait. That's plenty brawny to run just about any Linux distro and desktop environment just fine.

Yeah, while not the latest and greatest, more than sufficient for basic desktop distro.

will i load 32 or 64 bit
 

plan on running Ubuntu or mint. which version should I install?

what browser should I use to play Netflix, hbo go, etc?. what players for dvd's?

I use open office 4.01. I believe their is a Linux version?

thanks for the help.

I'd install the latest version of Mint. Not a particular fan of Ubuntu personally.

I don't have any of the HBO Go or Netflix myself, but either Firefox or Chrome should work. If they use flash, I'd go with Chrome due to the much more modern flash plugin available.

For DVD's there's literally tons of programs that will work. My personal favorite is xbmc.

Yes, there is OpenOffice and LibreOffice. LibreOffice is just a fork of OpenOffice with a few key difference, but mostly they look and work nearly identically.

I've always heard Netflix was a big problem for linux.