I run Tyneside Linux User Group, and have been using this operating system as my primary operating system since 1994.  I find it easy to use (since I'm more used to it than, say, Windows), robust and reliable.

If you want to talk about it, feel free to jump into Tyneside LUG's web chat.  You can find a Linux User Group near you by going to the national LUGs page.

I think it's brill, but then, everybody seems to like what they know.  I have to say, though, that when I hear about viruses, spyware and all that rubbish, I wonder why people tolerate a system that's so terribly vulnerable. 

Oooh, Linux just  moved my clock back an hour.  Cool!

 National LUGs page (find your local user group here)

My LUG (log in as guest if you want to use the chat)

I'm by no means a Linux guru but I use Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty Fawn) on a dual boot system with Windows 2000. Before that I used Fedora (core 5) and I've experimented with a few others but not used much. From what I can gather (and from personal experience) Ubuntu is the most user-friendly of the Linux distros however I still wouldn't say it's as user-friendly as Windows XP - very close though.

What do you want to do with it? I use my Linux machine just for general net use, email, playing music and DVDs. It works fine for that sort of thing but you don't get MP3 and DVD suport out of the box like you do with Windows. You need to install some software but it's all freely available downloads. I don't play games on my PCs so can't comment but I suspect you might have problems under Linux. 

As Brianetta says, it's much less vulnerable to viruses, spyware, etc. Generally speaking bugs are fixed more quickly than with Microsoft SW. IMHO it used to be more robust than Windows but that was in the days of Win 98 and earlier. I use Windows 2000 at home and XP at work and find them both rock solid. It's still not perfect but then I manage to crash Ubuntu occaisionally as well - rare though. 

Ubuntu 6.06 is a fairly old version and it's generally better to use the latest version unless there's a specific reason why you want an earlier one. That said, apparently there are a few problems with the new version of Ubuntu just released (7.10). One of the advantages of using Linux though is when something like that happens it's usually fixed in a few days by the Linux community as opposed to having to wait anything from 1 to 12 months for Microsoft to fix it in the next patch or service pack.

My tower went on the fritz and I was looking at replacing it. I saw a cheap PC tower at Tesco which comes with Linux 6.06 for £139.

Does it work with Memory Map?

I've not used Memory Map but I've had a quick look on their web site and it looks like they only support Windows. I believe you can get DOS/Windows emulators for Linux but I've never used them so can't say whether you could get MM to work that way.

£139 is very cheap, and you could upgrade to a later version of Linux for free. You could also install your copy of XP on the new machine assuming you have the disk, licence key etc it's not an OEM version.

The closest thing to mapping software for Linux is Google Earth.  It's a continual source of frustration to me that I can't take full advantage of any GPS system because no mapping companies support my OS.

The first one that does is pretty much guaranteed a sale.  I'm not going to install Windows just for a mapping application.

I would be an Ubuntu user if I had managed to install it. For some reason the hardware that I was using was unsupported in the Ubuntu boot disk. Anyway, I tried Xubuntu and a number of other distributions - all of which failed in some way (old second-hand Dell laptop) but finally found Kanotix that does the job fine.

I like the look and feel of Ubuntu - and was already biased given that Mark Shuttleworth is an acquaintance of mine (should this be on the name-dropping thread?). At work I use XP and Sun Solaris; on my home desktop I use MacOSX and on my laptop I use Linux! They all have their pros and cons - I'm not sufficiently advanced Linux user to get the most out of it, but it was free and had everything I needed in the initial distribution.

Other nice Linux OS's I have tried include SLAX (Kill Bill edition) for a handy bootable disk, and Suse for business apps. I'd like to try more OpenBSD stuff given its security reputation but I'd rather be playing outside!

John 

I've been using Ubuntu for nearly a year now and I definitely wouldn't go back to Windows. I was having a lot of stability problems with Windows and thought I'd try something different. I'm happy with how things have worked for me.

 If you are dependant on Windows-only software, I wouldn't count on getting it to work in Linux for definite, but you may do. It's an unknown.

My recommendation would be to put your current copy of Windows on the new machine if you NEED Memory Map. 

Try with Slax KillBill edition - designed to run off a mini-cd and still provide capacity for Windows software in native...

http://www.slax.org/download.php

I have no idea if it will work, but it shouldn't hurt to try!

John