My apologies in advance, but I have tried searching different forums for high-level guidance about transitioning from WinXP to Ubuntu and cannot seem to find an appropriate starting point.

If there is such a thread, can someone please direct me to it. I've got a whole slew of questions that may have already been discussed. I'd prefer to read what's already been said rather than ask for someone to "say it again, Sam."

TIA,
Jim Howell
"Rawest of the raw" newbie

You really aren't giving us much to go on here. There are thousands of threads like this, many of them here. Are you looking for help on installation or dual booting or Windows/Linux equivalents or help on commands? Though you may feel it counter productive, listing your questions doesn't hurt and, to be honest, none of us have the time or energy to search the web for one thread out of thousands.

Ask away, that is what we are here for after all.

Xavier,
Thank you for your response. "Thousands of threads", "one thread of thousands", yep, that is the way I have felt poking around this forum. There's lots of good info, and good questions but I do not know enough about what decisions I might have to make before moving into greater detail for the questions in the next step.

Actually, the question I was trying to ask is, "Is there a thread somewhere that resembles a FAQ for newbies running flavors of Win who want to shift to Linux." I had hoped to find conversations along the "dumb question" category. The answer appears to "Not really".

If I make the transition from WinXP to something like Ubuntu for both my home machine and my wife's home machine, I have to be able to create/configure/organize her machine so she isn't intimidated by the new environment. It took me a long time to get her to use a home computer. And, I have to be able to ensure that her limited set of apps are still available to her. I haven't yet heard from Kodak about the status of their EasyShare software and printer dock interface software for Linux. I didn't think that would be a legitimate question for this forum.

I'd rather not have to use a dual-boot environment or something like Wine - if I have understood correctly what it does for you - since my goal is to completely disassociate myself from the Redmond police.

And, still no coherent questions. I'll keep reading "Beginning Ubuntu Linux" and "Ubuntu Linux for Non-geeks". Hopefully I'll build the necessary vocabulary and concepts to know what questions I ought to be asking.

Thanks,
Jim

I think that the best thing to do is to list what your wife needs to do all the time. So if she simply wants email, browsing, music and basic office software, pretty much any Linux distro will do the job - I would say that PC Linux OS, Freespire and Ubuntu are aimed at the switchers more than the die hards. I would also suggest aiming for a KDE environment rather than Gnome as the look is fairly similar.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compari...dows_and_Linux is a good comparison article. http://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/...ndows_software gives a list of Windows software and the Linux equivalents.

Hope this helps and obviously come back if you need more detailed info. Oh, it would also be good to post the hardware of your wife's PC - just so there are no "gotchas" in the shape of unusual hardware.

Got it, Xavier, and reasonable questions that I know I need answers for

Hardware:

2003-vintage Compaq Presario
CPU: 2.7GHz Celeron
504 MB Ram
150 Gig Hard drive, 100+ Gig free

Software that I think I know how to transition:

MS Word & MS Excel - move to OpenOffice

Email: MS Outlook Express - move to Mozilla Thunderbird
Web-browser: MS IE7 - move to Mozilla Firefox
(both of these transitions seem smooth since I use T-bird and F-fox on my machine and she is comfortable working on my machine when needed)

Adobe PhotoShop Elements 2.0 - GIMP (she is frustrated trying to use PS E and ends up getting me to do any image enhancement beyond red-eye removal, so tossing PS E will make her happy. Whether she will be able to use GIMP is unknown to me at this point.)

WeatherBug - an continuous internet feed of local weather data and optional radar images. WB support has responded to my queries and informed me that there is an unofficial, Linux-compliant, widget type app available as a download from their development labs. I don't know if it works or not, but this could be a show-stopper for her. Probably her #3 use after email and internet browsing, #1 when bad weather is in the offing.

Software I am trying to discover info and issues for the transition

Google Earth - have had anecdotal comments that there are problems

Kodak EasyShare - photo "album" management software
Kodak EasyShare Printer Dock 6000 - combined photo printer and interface for her digital cameras, could be a driver issue here.
(Both Kodak issues are under investigation. I have found a reference that there is EasyShare executables for "Unix", but no reference to Linux. I have filed a support query, but no response as of yet.)

Thanks, and any insight is greatly appreciated. I'll keep the vector to KDE filed away for future reference. I think that the CD I have includes GNOME. I'll stick with that for part of my self-education process for future review for my wife's machine.

BTW, I haven't done so, but am preparing an old, marginal system for a reformat-installation of Ubuntu 8.03 from the CD included with the Ubuntu for Non-Geeks book.
Jim Howell

Graphics: instead of Gimp you can try Xara Xtreme or Krita.
To manage photos: digiKam, f-spot (or kphotoalbum or google picassa).

You might indeed have problems with Google Earth. Since they updated it last it stopped working on my machine - no decent graphics card.

Got it, thanks klearview. I'll check them out. IIRC, I had looked at a Win? version of picassa at one point, but didn't change for myself, don't remember why.

Your comments about the timing for Google Earth is consistent with the anecdotal comments of a friend of mine who "dabbles" with Linux.

Thanks,
Jim

Picasa does work on Linux, I have it installed on my box, so you shouldn't have any issues with it. For the transition to Gimp, I'd suggest looking at Gimpshop - it tries to make Gimp look a little more like Photoshop. There are a number of widgets and add ons for KDE that I know of - I just right clicked the taskbar, picked add applet, scrolled through the list to weather and applied. You need to choose at least one location and then got to display and select the location from the drop down. It doesn't show a radar but does give a lot of other information.

It sounds like you're pretty close to being able to switch to me, just remember that just about every problem has a solution and that LQ can help you if you get stuck.

Well, it has been almost 15 years since my friends could get the "geek" label to stick. I've mostly been fat, dumb, content and lazy since then, and forgotten most of what I thought I knew. At this point, I'm willing to try stuff, but I get irritated by being "blind-sided" by the "obvious to others" consequences of the questions I didn't know to ask.

I'm going to see if I can get my old, moth-balled machine to work in pure Ubuntu, then I'll consider dual-booting my own primary machine and trying to configure it to suit my initial preferences. I won't risk SWMBO's rath, "messing up her machine" until I'm pretty comfortable with expected consequences and can show her on my machine what I intend to do with hers.

Thanks for your help,
And as he said, "I'll be back!"
Jim

Ah, a wise man who has learnt from his experiences