i know some of the people here use ubuntu.
if i switch my machines to it, do i have to do a complete format of the hard drive and reload everything, or is there a way to load ubuntu and save all the stuff currently on the hard drives?
the laptop only has a years worth of info on it, but the desktop has over 6 years of info on it.

 

I believe it does a complete reformat.....if you have enough room on the drive, partition it and stick Ubuntu on the other partition.

 

Yeah just do a dual boot on a smaller partition, extra hardrive or even an external thumb drive hehe.
I have it on a few of my machines and love it.....but I also dont care of the microsoft monopoly....hehe So I support other ways too.

 

Depending on how much free space you have on your drive, you can setup a partition and dual boot.

Keep in mind none of your MS Windows Apps will run with Ubuntu, unless you install a program called WINE.

 

i found out last night that the windows compatable version is not all that great.
screwed the laptop all up, but was able to do an uninstall and system restore to get it running again.