Mac!

[Aqualis]

Congratulations on your switch from Windows!

What kind of printer do you have?

[Scarwake]

I have an HP D1320 I was able to get it to work after upgrading to 6.10.  But I'm up-to-date now with 7.04 though I can't quite figure out the download process, lol.  That and I was going to download Amarok but I couldn't get it to work right.

[windhound]

http://www.linuxprinting.org/show_printer.cgi?recnum=HP-Deskjet_D1320
shouldn't be any problems with the printer

however, I highly recommend you do a clean install instead of an upgrade.  From what you said it looks like you installed 6.06 then updated to where you are.  Generally upgrades are safe enough, but its always better to do a clean install when you can..  this goes for Windows and OS X as well.  Especially since you just got things rolling and havn't had time to set things up yet
Great thing about Ubuntu is that its only one cd

see this topic https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RestrictedFormats for help getting mp3, dvd, etc. playback

Rhythmbox is a good alternative to Amarok, same basic layout as iTunes really.  I think that's the one ubuntu gives you by default, but I forget

if you do reinstall with the newest CD let us know how the printer recognition goes, should be fine

just a note, 6.06 was their first LTS..  it was meant for servers and the like that didnt need the most cutting edge stuff, just a solid base.  Long Term Service, they'd keep releasing security patches for it for 5 years I believe.

Congrats on your move, hope it goes well


edit:  my server that was hosting the links I posted in here is down for a few days, I'm home for fall break so I figured I'd let it sleep.  It runs CentOS 5, which is Redhat 5.  Stable as can be, usually runs 24/7, and I use it as a desktop in addition to its minor server role.

[Aqualis]

Yeah, clean install is best. Just be warned that if you have a Dell laptop then installing Ubuntu 7.04 is somewhat tricky. But there's a good walkthrough on the unbuntuforums that helped me alot.

I've been successfully windows free for almost three months now on a top of the line Dell Inspiron 1520.

[Rough Raiders]

Yay VISTA!
*looks around*
Just kidding!
I am running VISTA though, on my Dell Inspiron 1521, and the fact that it uses up a gig of my RAM really bothers me... I'm thinking about upgrading to XP, and just running with that. Opinions?

[Aqualis]

Go with XP. Vista made no improvements whatsoever, and in my opinion, looks worse. It's also very annoying and overly dramatic.

For example: *SHAZZAM* "The program 'My Computer' has requested to run: Allow / Disallow" *BAM SPLASH fancy graphics SPARKLES*

Okay, maybe not with the shazzam, but still, all the space that is taken up by things that are there just to look pretty really annoys me.

It's also a resource hog, as you have already discovered.

[windhound]

There are many reasons to dislike vista
Its ram usage is not one
In this case it really is a feature, not a bug.  Vista looks at your ram and decides what the best use for your free ram would be, then allocates it out.  It frees up ram when needed.  Its actually a good thing, as it makes use of an otherwise unused resource
however, the fact that it cuts network speed by up to 90% when playing a sound file is unacceptable..  this fact is acknowledged by microsoft, seen by them as a feature not a bug
you can turn off the UAC allow deny crud, but eh.

If you can stand all the quirks of vista for now you might as well keep it.  Eventually, slowly, Vista will probably overtake XP in sales just by new box sales.  Then software (especially games now, with DX 10) will start being Vista only
If you cant stand Vista join the hordes 'upgrading' to XP :P

What about installing Ubuntu on a Dell?  Dell actually sells some of their systems preloaded with Ubuntu now, there shouldnt be that many issues...  But yeah, most problems you have can usually be resolved by a quick search or post on ubuntu's forum

[Scarwake]

Yeah, I have a Dell Latitude C640 or somethin...Its an older model but it worked just fine on installing Ubuntu.  And I got Amarok to install....I'm just getting used to the way Ubuntu installs things instead of just dling them from the net like with Windows.

Oh one question though....Is there a way to get more workspaces?  After I upgraded from 6.06 it went down to two workspaces from the original 4...but if I enable Desktop effects I have 4workspaces...

[windhound]

workspaces are simple enough. pretty sure you can just rightclick the workspace switcher and choose properties or whatnot

it looks like you've figured it out, but use synaptics for everything you want to install. 
everything I could think to install was in the repositories.  you may need to enable some, https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RestrictedFormats explains it alright
reason being is that all the stuff in the repositories is made for your install of ubuntu, the files you download, even if they say they're for ubuntu, have a slight chance of causing issues.  Everything you install from the repos is also automatically updated with the rest of your system

[Scarwake]

Gotcha!  Yeah I already got me repositories done and messed with...and thanks for the workspaces help...I didn't realize that there was a preference thing for them, lol.

[Scarwake]

Hey guys...I'm having an issue when I got to reload/load repositories...  I keep getting this error:

E: Could not get lock /var/lib/apt/lists/lock - open (11 Resource temporarily unavailable)
E: Unable to lock the list directory

How do I fix that?

[windhound]

Generally, that means that you have another program open that can update/install software;  if you had two programs tried to update software at the same time odd things can happen, so most packagemanagers, apt-get in ubuntu's case, wont let you have two update/install programs open at once.  thus the lock
if you cant find the one that's already open, just reboot
if that doesnt work...  check the ubuntu forums