I've run Ubuntu on underpowered machines that could never run XP or Vista (with or without malware.)

I run Ubuntu 7.04 (aka "Feisty Fawn") on my Koolu box, I'm very happy with it. When house guests come over and use the machine, they just click on the Firefox icon and surf their hearts out.

Switched from Fedora to Ubuntu a few years ago and never looked back! It runs both my Web site and interactive sessions fantastically even on the 5-year old hardware I threw at it.

I have run various flavors of Linux over the years, Ubuntu is still my favourite. SimplyMEPIS is quite good, it handles drivers particularly well, i didnt have to do anything special to get my preferred TwinView set-up going, which usually sees me fiddling for a while with xorg.conf with Ubuntu.

Its not really mainstream yet, and I like it that way, though my mother can use Ubuntu for basic web surfing and word processing without any issue once the machine is set up.

I was a dyed-in-the-wool WIndows user, dabbling with Linux. Well, I just spent the weekend setting up Ubuntu on almost every single PC, to either dual-boot w/ Windows, or as the primary OS and run Windows in Virtual Box.

I just am so sick of the vulnerabilities in Windows. I had a guest user hose up one of the machines. The guest user should have no admin rights, no ability to install anything, but Windows is full of holes.

A malware got installed by a malicious ad, and the guest account managed to get the entire PC infected, through the All_users profile. Even though the c:\program files & c:\windows folders were not affected, and the primary parts of the Windows registry were protected, the virus still managed to infect the All_user registry to keep calling up itself anytime Windows was started.

After spending 6 hours cleaning up that damn mess, I said no freaking more, no way no how.

Switched everything / every one to Linux, and run Windows inside Virtual Box only if necessary.

Ubuntu is amazing. PS - there is another zero day Adobe vulnerability discovered on 10/9, that still has not been patched. Windows users be very very careful. As a Linux user I can continue on worry-free about viruses.

I love Ubuntu. This thing rocks!!

I have a couple ubuntu and a mac mini with kubuntu(take that apple!)

Abode has been a thorn in my side this year, between all their hole they are causing about 95% of my client and other end user problems. Very bad holes in their entire range of apps, from flash and shockwave to reader and the full products suites.

I've been running Windows 7 on my laptop for the last several months, but I was very close to replacing it with Ubuntu tonight. Instead, I baked a pie.

I use Ubuntu on my home media server. The last time I used Ubuntu on my laptop, I switched back to Windows because of the lack of Virtualbox's USB support. I wanted to be able to sync my Blackberry and iPod.

Yea I have a hard time trying to decide who is worse, Adobe or MS. I try to avoid using Adobe software if I can help it now. Non-Adobe software is the way to go if possible, since Adobe software is bloated and full of holes. I especially hate flash, since it can be used as a backdoor, and also has its own cookies that most people don't know about.

Just dual-boot, and run Windows only when you have to.

Hmm, I guess you can give up flash if you no longer want to visit Youtube or the N other sites that use flash on the internet. You could browse the net in lynx, I'm sure its quite secure

If you think that most open source software is coded secure by design, I would highly doubt it. Some of the worst security vulnerabilities come from kiddies hacking up code they know nothing about, ie. if you look at all the exploitable Joomla modules.

In Windows 7/Vista Microsoft is going the right direction in restricting users by default and making them authenticate to go into admin mode. However most users don't understand anything about it, and if someone was surfing for porn on ubuntu and they were asked to for the root pass to play a "video" they would probably just type it in and the whole machine will become infected anyways. Cleaning up rootkits on linux is not easier than windows.

Yeah, I may just do that. It's an old laptop with a smallish hard drive, though (80 gigs I think).

I've started to use Ubuntu on the laptop. It works for most things but not all, so I'm still spending a lot of time in Windows.

Having been a Windows user since 1991 I find that Ubuntu takes some getting used to, and I still feel more comfortable in Window (XP).... but having had the various Windows security flaws explained to me I try to stick to Ubuntu when I'm using Internet-based applications "out in the wild"

UBU 9 on thinkpad tablet, works great.

Do you ever use the live CD, or do you just dual boot?

you may want to try 'kubuntu' instead, more windows like apeal.

I used the live CD, worked well, but I did have to make changes to the load to compensate for some multi-touch thing. In the end, I just did a dual boot to a second partition (the typical load is TINY) and then share items across the two partitions.