soon to be a xwindow user

I've been doing some soul searching lately. I have decided to not be one of Mr. gates sheep anymore. Maybe because
from all the research on windows "vista" having control of my property and deciding to take it away erks me.I have looked to linux a few times and decided not to go that route because of not being able to play my favorite games.
That was before I bought my ps3,now mr. gates i say to you,SUCK IT!

With every thing that they have done I find it really hard to
want to purches anything from that company again,software,cpu,mb,whatever.Even if it means not keeping up with the tech.i.e. amd.

So fellow fourm members i turn to all of you for help.I think
I will try ubuntu's new release.Since I have a older pc,I am not worried about gaming on the pc anymore and i have a few q's.

If I download ubuntu and start the install will it take all windows compents out of will i have to uninstall them also will all my stored data be erased.

thanks to all that offer advise

depends how you are set up.. are you using RAID (lookup fakeraid) as that is a major concern... additionally, do you only have one harddrive? are you planning on REPLACING windows with linux or dual booting? It is possible to dual boot with windows and linux, I do it every day....

Now as a MAJOR caution, if you do have a fakeraid, be careful when you are installing, and the only success ive had with that is unplugging my fakeraid (IE windows partitions) and only having the harddrive i plan to install linux on plugged in. plan out your install before you actually start it, particularly if you have a second drive, with data that you want to save.

Your best bet is to abuse that dvd/cd burner and/or and thumbdrives you have to backup any pictures/music/whatever that you want to keep.

first, always do a backup when attempting anything like this (repartitioning, reformatting, reinstalling, etc.) and since you are creating a backup of your data, you might as well wipe the disk and do a full install of ubuntu. regular Ubuntu will probably be the easiest for you to transition to, but Xubuntu might perform a little better depending on how old your hardware actually is.

How old a PC are we talking? Ubuntu is one of the easiest distros to use for sure, but not one of the fastest. It includes a lot of software to make the user's experience very intuitive/automatic.

I am running right now on an Athlon Tbird 1400 ghz (one of many machines). I am using a very lean install with a custom kernel and fluxbox as a window manager (takes some manual configuration). I use thunderbird for mail because webmail is too slow.

Firefox 3 Beta 5 is included by default, I believe, in the newest Ubuntu. That's good news for you because FF3 is about twice as fast at running most web apps as FF2 due to a totally redesigned gecko engine.

If by slow, you mean something like a dual core running at only 2 ghz ... then ignore all the above.

gigabyte 7vaxp,athlon 2000 barton, pretty sure it has fake raid but turned off in bios, 1 hdd

in that case, backup your personal data, and blast the hard drive

I would echo everyone else and use Ubuntu/Xubuntu. Intutive system, friendly for switchers and beginners, yet robust enough for the seasoned veterans. The community support is perhaps the largest in the GNU/Linux world. Xubuntu (running XFCE) is the lightest on the computer, so if you need something lighter go for that.

Or you could just get vanilla ubuntu and slap fluxbox on it if you really want to get down to it.

If you're just testing to find something you like then I suggest you try building a VM first. VMware and virtual server r2 can both can host Linux. You should be able to do installs from ISOs and you won't have to waste cds/dvds burning distros.

if you really want to get your hands dirty, try ArchLinux. you build your install from scratch and install only what you want/need, making it very lightweight. They also have a very good wiki to help guide you through installation and any other issues you might have. they say that its not a distro for beginners, but my first real experiment with linux was with Arch and i love it. i had previously played with ubuntu liveCD's , but not enough to say that i was experienced and never permanently i would recommend using XFCE for a lightweight, fully featured Desktop Environment.

Another distro that i liked is DreamLinux. It has a much more automated install and the liveCD version has XFCE and Gnome and you can pick which one to use at boot. Once you figure out which one you like, you boot in using that DE and start the installer.

Athlon XP 2000 should be fine for ubuntu, especially if you have an nVidia card (you'll get pretty 3d graphics by default).

I'll suggest Linux Mint, it's a whole lot like Ubuntu but much easier to set up and comes with a few more essential things out of the box (ability to play DVDs, various codecs, etc.)

Ubuntu is great but I'd spare some frustration and go with Mint. There's even a fluxbox version of Mint, but gnome or xfce should be fine.

There are lots of guides to do a dual-boot and save all your windows data. Any guide for Ubuntu should be the same for Mint, seeing as Mint is based off of ubuntu, and the installer is nearly identical. Good luck!

I had to order the cd, it would take along time @ 7 kbs.

Ouch... dialup?