<div class="gmail_quote">On Sun, Aug 15, 2010 at 20:40, Ramnarayan.K <<a href="mailto:ramnarayan.k@gmail.com">ramnarayan.k@gmail.com</a>> wrote: <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;"> Hi Am posting this with some trepidation since its not about Ubuntu per se and seeks to provide an alternative to new / first time users who are having trouble with Plain vanilla Ubuntu but here goes. </blockquote></div> Thats a nice piece Ram. A lot of it makes sense as well for a Newbie user to Linux / Ubuntu. A few of my own points. For a person who has moved from Win, any main stream Linux distro's default install provides a much more usable machine than what a default Win install does. From Drivers for Video, Audio, and a myriad bunch of devices like bluetooth to scanner or cameras to Personal Media Players like IPods, all these are available on a default install. Plus browser, chat, Office, PDF reader, CD burner, and a whole bunch of commonly used apps. For a lot of people (new and old users alike) just downloading the Ubuntu restricted extras will give them restricted media formats access and with those apps they will have most that they will ever be doing with their machine. Yes, from a language point, they will need to download the languages that they need. Bells and whistles - they have 3D, compiz, themes, what more does a regular user need, especially considering the fact that i have hardly seen any Windows user who has gone beyond changing the Desktop wall paper and the mouse pointer. One thing that i do miss is a thoughtfully made DVD with a lot of common apps over those available in the install CD. But then it probably is much better downloading only those software that you are in need than a lot more that you may need at some point in future. What i would like improved - Software center should atleast show the download size of the selected software and the dependencies. Yes, i have heard that Mint is much more Newbie friendly than Ubuntu default, though i have not used it. Probably that has to do atleast in part with the inclusion of Proprietary software in the Mint install. If you know what you need then as mentioned a ubuntu minimal install is the way to go. Personally I prefer a distro that gives me a usable install in a CD worth of download that installs in about 3-5GB than a distro that comes in DVD with a whole lot of software that i may or may not need and installs in over 12Gb. Thats one main reason why i moved from Opensuse to ubuntu a while back. But the more i get to learn the workings of the Linux system, the more i am finding myself moving towards distros that are simple, efficient, small and give you just what is needed. That why i keep trying small distros like Puppy, DSL, Slitaz, SLAX, AntiX, NimbleX, Austrumi etc. Maybe also because my Linux exp started with Puppy Linux that came in a 50MB size.These distros give me a fully usable system in the space that a Video driver package occupies in a regular system. For me atleast there is beauty in small, simple and efficient things. -- Regards Narendra Diwate