Ubuntu for dummies?

[Chewbecca]

I'm pretty sure that once you start ubuntuing, you'll never want to windows again.

I use windows via VMWare because I HAVE TO since my embroidery software is licensed with windows.

And it KILLS ME to use windows. It drives me temporarily mad everytime I have to travel to the windows portion of my computer.
Windows, I find, wants to make my decisions for me. I like to tell my computer what to do, not have my computer tell me what to do by narrowing down my options.:lol-sign:
Like, with linux I find that if I download a file, I have a designated area that file goes to everytime. And it automatically just puts it in that area when I download. Windows, yeah, it gives me the option to "not ask this question again" and automatically put it somewhere, but I can NEVER trust that "somewhere" will be the same spot everytime. hahahaha.

 

[CharlieDog]

I really am enjoying it now. I kind of have to, since I took the asus that I fixed and gave the windows running acer to my husband for school work.

I need to get a few programs for it, and I know it came with an office program, but how does that program stack up vs OpenOffice? I think it's LibreOffice?


Any particular favorite programs you'd recommend?

 

[blue]

I think LibreOffice has more support then OpenOffice does these days, dont quote me on that. Both the latest OO and LO seem to work with MS Office 2007 and up. Either are not compatible with MS Office 2003. Ive used OO more but am liking LO more and more. I do have MS Office 2007 installed on the Windoze partition of my netbook.

I use one keyboard and track pad across 2 desktops, a server, and a netbook, with Synergy. For working with the terminal I use Guake. Opera works in Linux as good or better then it does in Windoze. Dropbox is a given. Thunderbird for Email, Ive seen rumors it will be the default email for the 11.10 release.

 

[CharlieDog]

Awesome. I was using OO on my Windows machine, I was hoping the files would be transferable to LO. I've never used Dropbox or anything like it though.

I have both Banshee and Rhythmbox installed on here, and I can't decide which is better

We use Thunderbird at work, so I may try installing it on here and seeing how it works for me. I have two email accounts, one for "professional" use and one is my personal email that's connected to just about everything.

 

[blue]

I need to get more of my family hip to Dropbox, 2GB of free online storage is pretty dang cool. And my family only updates the Family Contact List once a year. If we could make it editable and in a family Dropbox we could all keep our own info up to date and available to the whole family.

All of my music is on my server and I havent found a good software solution for streaming it to my other PCs or phone yet other then Google Music.

I like Thunderbird for multiple email accounts, cant explain it it just works better.

 

[CharlieDog]

I downloaded Thunderbird, and am researching Dropbox and the like right now. Ubuntu has something similar called Ubuntu One, I believe? Anyway, I wish I'd had it before I reformatted my Windows netbook. I have a crap load of pictures I didn't pull off of it that I'd forgotten about, and now they're gone.

I see that Thunderbird does RSS, but I'm just now beginning to try to use an RSS feed, what is it good for really? Blogs and stuff? I don't really keep up with the news very much.

I like Opera on my nook (that's rooted) but I prefer Firefox for my browser on the computer.