Get a look at ubuntu www.ubuntu.com a very good one for beginners in linux.

@ subzero,my reason for wanting to try out linux is simply discovery.i would just love to try something différent than Windows Vista which i find cumbersome.by the way,i'm just an ordinary comp user-email,internet and Office applications. @ wanyo checked out Ubuntu and i like it.thanks

Yes we can

@sweetie & @Preident Obam-Bam; are you the same person? Why is the later answering a question directed at the former?

@Djinn; Obuntu is NOT an 'African Linux flavour' It is just a NAME chosen for one flavour of Linux. There is nothing African about the OS,except the name!!

@sweetie; Linux is good in terms of being immune to viruses. A few years ago it was not able to open MS applications (Word,Excel,etc),but now it does...and if you have an older version (7 or earlier) you can get a small programme to help you open MS applications.

I tried migrating one time but I had problems getting drivers to run my telephone modem...which was providing my internet connection....Ubuntu asked me to download the drivers from the internet!!!

If you are used to Windows,you will find Linux equally cumbersome,if not worse!!

I always keep a copy at hand: it comes in handy when you need to deleted files infected by a virus that has no cure.

Behind the gardens...Behind the wall...Under the tree (Including: Red...Dark Blue...Yellow)

Mukiha - you want to wager on that?

The problem with equality is that we desire that it be with those that have more than us rather that those that have less

@ all,thanks for the useful advice.I think i will download the Ubuntu on my laptop and try to use it for about two months or so to gauge it's performance in comparison to Windows. I must say that my only interest in this is to discover a new operating system,it's merits and demerits,etc.
@ mukiha,for this post,President Obam-Bam and i are the same person. when replying i used my boyfriend's phone and forgot that he had already logged in under the President user name. Thanks for making me realize my error.in reality,however,we are two different people

if all you want is discover,don't bother installing. just use knoppix.
linux is one cumbersome OS. doing simple stuff becomes such a hustle. mara its mounting drives. etc. like mukiha,phone drivers are a hustle to get on any linux.

but linux is better than windows on only one thing,its shell is superior. you can write scripts to do or automate just about anything,and i love that. but that's not an advantage to a user without a level of programming experienced.

for my desktop by the way,Am a windows die-hard. recently moved to windows 7 and loving it. that i guess is the fastest and most usable OS yet.

download vmware workstation 6.0 or higher from vmware.com then install. run the linux distro of our choice. hope ua laptop has 1GB of ram or higher.

This is what Canonical says about itself. Note that the word 'AFRICA' does not appear anywhere!!!
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Founded in late 2004,Canonical Ltd is a company headquartered in Europe with over 200 employees working in 23 countries (and counting). Canonical is the commercial sponsor of Ubuntu project.


Our mission
Our mission is to realise the potential of free software in the lives of individuals and organisations by:


delivering the world's best free software platform
ensuring its availability to everyone
supporting it with high quality professional service offerings
facilitating the continued growth and development of the free software community

Our staff
Our staff has deep roots in the open source community and a proven track record of success in the commercial software industry. Team members include leaders from the Gnome,KDE,Linux,Debian and Bazaar open source projects,helping us to stay at the forefront of the rapidly changing open source software world.

Our community
We believe the open source community simply creates better software. Our community enables us to increase our development capacity many times over. Everyone collaborates. As a result,we deliver higher quality,more secure and more easily integrated software. And we do it more frequently than others do.


Our services
Services include 24x7 support and professional services,engineering services,and hardware and software certification for Ubuntu. Our global partner network offers local support,industry leading hardware and software from 500 companies globally. Our training programme offers classroom-based courses to help administrators obtain 'Ubuntu Certified Professional' status. UCP is a training certification based on the LPI level 1 certification.


Our distribution
Ubuntu is a community developed and supported project. Since its launch in October 2004,Ubuntu has become one of the most highly regarded Linux distributions with millions of users around the world. Every six months we select,test and bring together the world's best free and open source software,and make it freely available on common technology platforms.

Ubuntu will always be free to download,free to use and free to distribute to others. With these goals in mind,Ubuntu aims to be the most widely used Linux system,and is the centre of a global open source software ecosystem.

Behind the gardens...Behind the wall...Under the tree (Including: Red...Dark Blue...Yellow)

@ all,thanks for the debate. i'm learning quite a bit. tried to download Ubuntu but it took too long and i gave up. Had a very slow ISP-AfricaOnline so i decided to order a CD to try out. can't wait for the era of High speed,Lower cost internet to start. When are these cables going live?

way to have several distros running think i got spoilt with free stuff