Ubuntu 8.10

[#1]

I find I tend to use whichever distro fits either the machine to be used or the intended user.
I recently installed Kubuntu 7.04 Alternate edition on an older laptop that won't boot from USB or SD and only the alternate editions up to 7.04 will install from a PCcard attached CDrom - even with boot options added to affect the way the CD gets identified.
Have since gone from 7.04 to 7.10 via upgrade and will upgrade to the newer versions.
However, if a user wanted a distro that's closer to a "Windows" experience and had newer hardware, I'd choose -PCLinuxOS, Mint or Mepis ahead of the Ubuntu family.

[#2]

Exactly the three distros I'd also recommend to tempt a beginner away from Windows. Which is why I'm so upset that the media, without exception as far as I can see, always suggest Ubuntu. They have been brainwashed by a very good campaign which no other distro has the money to match.
When my children and grandchildren come to stay, they of course use my computer. They have never made any comment about using PCLOS. Not sure they even noticed that it wasn't Windows. Last week, on the second day of their visit, I booted to Ubuntu.
"Dad, Grandpa, please can you change it back to how it was yesterday!" 

[#3]

But the Ubuntu (Gnome) interface is quite Windows-like.
But it isn't  Windows, so it doesn't look identical to Windows.
Perhaps if I used a more basic Window manager, it would more like Windows?

[#4]

kde behaves the nearest to windows.  it's easy to navigate and many features feel familiar before you know them well.  it's much more powerful and gives you access to 20 desktops - lots of real estate to spread out on.

[#5]

I might upgrade to this when it comes out so that I'm running the latest release.
Is it likely to be straightforward or another scrub the partition job
After much work my partitions are now quite nicely arranged.

[#6]

Note that Gnome - the "standard" Ubuntu will run most "Kde" packages - I'd recommend you try K3b for writing to CD/DVD etc.

[#7]

most distributions offer altlernative desktops in their repositories, so all you should need to install is kdebase and then look in whatever package manager you use to see what else is listed under kde.
ubuntu is a strongly gnome-centric distribution and some argue that their implementation of kde is shoddy at best.  if you want to try distributions more kde-centric, there is pclinuxos, mandriva and suse, that i know of.  you should not need to reformat all your partitions.  if you keep / and /home on separate partitions, you could even use the same /home, provided you used a different username from the one you use in your current distro.
best practise is to back up all valuable data off the machine, format / and /home and install the new distro.

[#8]

Quote from: techguy

I might upgrade to this when it comes out so that I'm running the latest release. Is it likely to be straightforward or another scrub the partition job

KDE is simply another desktop environment. I believe Ubuntu has a KDE meta-package; install that and it will install everything required.
You can continue to use GDM to log-in - it will give you the choice of GNOME or KDE.

[#9]

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install kubuntu

[#10]

I think the second line should be

sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop

[#11]

Damn. Indeed it should. Thanks axis.

[#12]

and I thought you lot said Linux was easy

[#13]

it is.  error messages mean something.  the underlying structure remains the same throughout releases and from distro to distro.  once familiar with the methods of using, it gets even easier.

[#14]

Quote from: pierre_pierre

and I thought you lot said Linux was easy

There is a GUI package management feature version installed where you just tick a box. 

[#15]

Error messages easy huh
I downloaded a creative X-Fi driver and went to install it and got C compiler errors.

Is this because I need to refer to the ALSA library?