that's cool. I'll stick around and check in every few minutes for the next hour to see if you have questions.

And of course, I have 60-70 blank DVDs and not a single blank CD. Can I use a DVD to do this or do I need to download the puppy version for my USB flash drive?

the ISO should write to a DVD, no problem. If you want to use the USB, download UNetbootin (google it) and just select ubuntu out of the available distros. EDIT: Got to get sleep, sorry. Goodnight and goodluck.

I put in the DVD, and didn't realize my keyboard wasn't plugged in when I booted up my PC. It got to some screen asking me what language I wanted, but by the time I could sneak behind my PC and plug the keyboard in, it had already picked English, installed Ubuntu, and loaded itself.

I CAN SEE MY OLD FILES!

Oh man I'm so happy right now.

Huh. I wonder if linux would fix this laptop (actually it might... except for the mousepad not working and the cd drive not popping out when I want it to but popping out at random otherwise)
(never buy an hp laptop guys)

I'm copying stuff to my external! Yes!!!

This Ubuntu stuff seems pretty easy to use so far. I like how the file folders seem to work like FireFox.

If I stick with Ubuntu, will I need to get different versions for all my programs like AIM, WinAmp, FireFox, and oh... will SlSk work on Linux at all?

most of that stuff is already packaged in with Ubuntu.

Firefox is the default browser.

XMMS is a reincarnated version of Winamp (the same skins work for both!)

Pidgin is what i use for Aim, Google, MSN, yahoo, etc. etc. you can have all of those services running at the same time on one buddylist if you want. I believe that Pidgin is also part of Ubuntu.

Ubuntu also has a built in program called "Wine" that lets you install a limited number of Windows programs. So if you're lucky, you might be able to install the windows programs that you usually run too. I think they've gotten Itunes to work on it ^_^

And if you like Ubuntu enough but you need to use windows for some vital programs that wine just doesn't run, you can dual boot the computer. Just install Windows first then Ubuntu afterwards. Usually Ubuntu can detect that you have windows and will ask you if you want to do a dual boot system.

It will install itself and when you turn on your computer, it will take you to a menu and will ask you if you want to boot into windows or into linux.

oh, and

Aw shit, I'm getting converted. Well I don't even know where my system restore DVD is that would reinstall Windows on here, so I don't think I have a choice. As long as I have all my stuff successfully backed up, I don't care what happens anymore.

I guess I'll try some welcome to Ubuntu tutorial or something.

Okay, so I copied all my music, documents, anything important I remembered over to my external, and was copying my photos. It copied everything fine except for one folder, the one for this summer. It gave me an error saying it was having trouble opening that folder. Then it froze. I looked up some commands to force-quit or whatever, but nothing worked, so I just turned off the PC. I plugged my external into the Mac and everything copied fine except for the photos I took this summer, about half are missing in random order. Now I reload Ubuntu and it doesn't get to the main GUI. It says something weird like:

BusyBox v1.10.2 (Ubuntu 1:1.10.2-1ubuntu6) built-in shell (ash)
Enter 'help' for a list of built-in commands.

(initramfs) _

And then it expects me to type stuff. So I just typed in "reboot" and it loaded back to the same screen. I haven't been able to get back to the GUI to see if I can save that one last photo folder.

Also, whether or not I can save that last folder, how do I format this thing and install the full Ubuntu now?