i put Ubuntu on one of my machines about a month ago. It's a fairly simple follow the directions, but if you are not familiar with interacting with the OS via command lines, it can be intimidating at first. One of the things I learned was that the install from Ubuntu only gives you a little bit of a lot of things. It is useful to update the software right after installing and looking through all the packages available and loading things you want.

I've found ubuntu useful in telling how to get software that is not already installed. It's been a pretty good experience so far.

-vealdog