Go to the boot help menu and look at the options there. One of them should let you run it fairly easily - but don't be surprised if your cd doesn't let you have better than 640x480 resolution.

Apparently, you haven't used Linux - The reason we have distributions is so you can install all the necessary software at once from a single source, since it would be much too painful to install each individual bit of software that makes Linux work by itself. It's actually more software, usually, since you get several choices of most trivial software and numerous things which you would buy and install separately on Windows, like graphics editing software.

Actually, I think thats one of the reason the learning curve is so steep. Its choice overload on things that have such minor differences you have to be an expert in each program to know the difference.

Ubuntu installs several programs by default - If you don't like them, you can bother to go poke around and choose something else.

Eh it stops during booting and says something about a screen saver not running on this display adaptor :S.

Exactly.. thats the problem.

Pointless choices.

Not pointless. You don't have to choose, but most people do because the difference between desktops and window managers is significant; same goes for web browsers and text editors. Most FOSS people unanimously support Firefox (I swing between it and Opera) but there are flame wars over what editor, window manager and desktop environment one should use. They're different enought to prompt arguments and make finding the best one difficult, since they do very different things. I can poke around the web and find some screenshots to display how much variety it allows. The greatest advantage of FOSS is freedom of choice - I don't see why forcing people to use that particular set of software would improve it. Users are raised in a culture where everything is chosen for them; FOSS can be daunting because of that, but using the standard desktop that comes with Ubuntu isn't any harder by itself than using Windows; it's just different. There are window managers for Linux that simulate the Windows environment, making the transition even easier. And FOSS software, unlike the bloated mass of Microsoft software, is very small - You can afford to have several desktop environments, text editors, web browsers, file managers and window managers installed, so you can switch back and forth between them.

Just to serve as comparison:

Gnome with the standard Ubuntu desktop.
The KDE desktop running SuperKaramba; more screenshots here.
Enlightenment, a window manager for eye-candy addicts, here running one of its lighter themes,
FVWM, the favourite window manager of gurus everywhere. Hard to configure, so it's not recommended for newbies or people who don't want to spend hours tweaking their desktops, but it lets you do nearly anything.
FVWM running another configuration, just to showoff all the flexibility.

Most users will be happy and comfortable with the Gnome desktop. But FOSS doesn't force you to be happy and comfortable with it; you can go and find something else you like.

(EDIT: Sorry for the double post, I thought the forums were still doing that nifty 'consolidate double posts' thing.)

Oh that is so amazing. The only thing out of ANY of those screen shots that isn't already on Windows is the native support of the multiple desktops. Even that has probably been reproduced somewhere, but it isn't really needed. There are multiple styles of docks around, multiple skinning/theming/etc tools around and many widget engines that allow you to recreate and use all of the stuff you showcased plus more without slowing down the computer significantly.

And interestingly enough - once you are good enough at tweaking windows - you can make your Windows even faster than Linux. My Windows XP loads up faster than any recent distro of Linux ever has.

And that is easier than installing a Linux distribution and switching window managers how, exactly?

All the ATI graphics cards give you multiple Desktops, and some Nvidia cards do as well.

umm.. wow

article speaks for itself...

http://www.informationweek.com/windows/sho...cleID=188100639

I never really hardcore tweaked my WinXP install, but it never get even close to the usability and responsiveness of the default Ubuntu install.



I messed around with Windowblinds for a bit (slowed my system a crawl, but I only had 256 MB of RAM, so that's understandable), and the nvidia multiple desktops. At least with my graphics card, it was nowhere near as easy to use as a GNOME or KDE desktop switcher.



There are plenty of things I miss about Windows: Apt is awesome, but anything I can't get as a .deb or in a repository is a pain in my ass to install. I'm sure it'll get easier, but out of the box newb users will definitely find Windows easier.



Windows has an easier to understand file system, instead of trying to figure out the difference between /bin and /usr and things of that nature.



And Windows does have a ton of software (not that linux doesn't, it's just different stuff).

But in the end, Linux isn't full of crap I don't want and can't get rid of. I'd love to be able to get rid of IE and Media Player and such, but it's directly integrated into the OS, and I can't really touch it. Linux, I can get rid of anything I don't need.



Oh, and it's easily been at least twice as fast, on average, to kill a hanging program on Linux, even if it means reloading GNOME. Windows it often took me 5 minutes to get rid of an unresponsive program, before Task Manager actually managed to kill it.

In Windows you CAN get rid of IE and Media Player and a whole lot of other stuff - you just need to know how. In fact, my gaming version has both of them removed (the only way you can browse the net is if you install firefox or opera - I have made it so it is an absolute pain to put internet explorer on it and uses less than 90mb of ram once it is fully installed.

The reason it was so slow for you to task manager away a program - lack of ram and lack of tweaks.

Incorrect. I -had- 256 megs of RAM. Since December, I've had 1 GB. That should be plenty. And no, as far as I know, you can't get rid of IE; it's also the file browser used by Windows. Without it, My Computer and such wouldn't work.

And we come to the same the same situation really. If you can get rid of them, b ut it's an utter PITA, that's not user friendly. I'm glad they give me the tools I need to work, out of the box, but after I get what I want, you should be able to easily and gracefully get rid of the default, if you don't want it.

The fastest way to get rid of Internet Explorer - XPLite. And for the basic windows install, windows by itself takes virtually all of that 256mb of ram.

That's hideous. I'm using about 190mb right now. That's with GAIM running, and a window open, an open terminal running lyntin, system monitor, and Firefox. Firefox is 100mb of that.

Gaim, Skype, gdesklets, liferea, firefox, Xchat: 300 mb. Dunno how much of that is Firefox.

Probably half.. =/

Firefox has me thinking I need to buy a quick GB of RAM just for the hell of it.

Try Opera.