Newbie

[Peter Garrett]

On Sun, 09 Jul 2006 13:45:58 +0200
Karl Järnhammer <jernhammer at ystad.nu> wrote:
[snip]
> What I would really like to be able to do is:
> 
> Press a button that backs up everything and saves it somewhere.
> Press another button that erases everything.
> Bung in a CD which installs an OS of my choice and retrieves anything from
> my back up that is not on the new OS, opens itself and confirms that
> everything is OK and 'have a nice day'...........
> 
> It should do this of course in the time it takes to drink a cup of coffee
> and it should be free in the context 'no money involved'  - now, is that too
> much to ask?

Your needs are modest, apparently ;-) 

I can't promise the first paragraph above - but with a reasonably modern
machine, I doubt that you would manage two leisurely cups of coffee in the
time it takes to install Ubuntu from the "desktop" disk :-) On the other
hand, there is a real risk of becoming a geek, and geeks drink a lot of
coffee rather quickly as a rule, so ...

Ubuntu is, of course, free as in "free coffee" ;-)  - but after you've
installed it and used it for a while, I think most of all you will
appreciate the freedom you have. Not only freedom from Viruses,
Intrusions, Spyware, Trojans and Adware. [ I leave you to put the initials
together and compare them to the offering that may or may not be coming
next year from a certain well-known company ;-)  ]

Regarding the *cough* "philosophical" discussion you happened to land in
the middle of - just a question of timing. Mailing lists have a way of
flying off at a tangent from time to time. There's probably a PhD thesis
in there somewhere, as an interesting study in human behaviour.

Ubuntu may be slightly more challenging than what you are used to - after
all, it is different - but it won't nag you for anything more than your
password, and there is a lot of help available here, on IRC, in the help
documentation, and of course from http://google.com/linux  .

I expect within months you will be surprised to find yourself *answering*
some questions, instead of having to *ask* them, as we all do when we
start.

I think you'll enjoy the ride. 

Peter