First, I'd like to point out, I'm kind of disappointed with Hardy Heron in general. I found that Gutsy Gibbon was much more stable. I just hope that Hardy lives up to its name, as I'm currently using it. Secondly, I have a short fuse and thin patience. This isn't really a good combo for a Linux user. I've exploded at the Ubuntu Community before, and I apologize for this.
Ubuntu, a Debian Linux based OS, is a fairly usable Linux distribution. It has all the things a typical office worker would need, some simple games, office software, graphic software, et cetera. Ubuntu also has several ways to improve your system, especially for showing off. Compiz Fusion is a collection of impressive and powerful effects and utilities for Linux. It makes Vista look like it came in the late 80s. No lie!
On top of that, there are countless open source games and programs to rival the popular commercial softwares. These are free to use as you see fit, no licensing and restrictions, unlike Microsoft's office, and even Windows itself. Linux is free as in Freedom. No restrictions, no hidden fees.
But Linux is not without its flaws. Linux communities are usually elitist. They treat newcomers with disrespect and even acting as though they and their posts, don't exist. Ubuntu's forums are not like that, but instead, crowded and flooded with many questions. This means you'll more than likely have to bump your topic a couple of times in order to even get an answer.
Help doesn't come easy, either. Certain hardware issues cannot be solved, and there can be no help at all for this. For example, if you ever heard of the sky2 driver, you'd probably heard of Master-of-None, who is myself. I've had many problems with this driver and its nearly impossible to fix it, without replacing it. I can't replace it. Ubuntu's developers don't actually program sky2, as far as I know, so they can't exactly fix any problems with it.
Hardy Heron isn't as stable as it's name implies, either. It's crashed completely on me a few times. Linux is supposed to have decent crash handling, and if it does crash, it should be able to fix WITHOUT restarting. Not the case with Ubuntu.
There are some other things that I could address, but wouldn't be the fault of them. Such as support for Shockwave, and default MP3, Flash, and Video at default (Shockwave doesn't even work on Linux.)
Either way, don't switch unless you know what you're in for, a mistake I made when I jumped right in. Prepare to deal with some really bad stuff, but also realize that the work you put into making it work for you is worth it in the end.
