Ubuntu brings Linux to the masses, but it can still be intimidating for newbies, neophytes, and geeks-in-training. With Ubuntu Made Easy by your side you'll be ready to face any challenge, and you'll discover just how fun Linux can be.Packed with tips, tricks, and helpful pointers, Ubuntu Made Easy will get you up and running with the world's most popular free operating system. Authors Rickford Grant and Phil Bull walk you through common tasks like installing and playing games, accessing your favorite social networks, troubleshooting hardware and software problems, interacting with your Windows installation, and more.With the help of the book's straightforward explanations and step-by-step projects, you'll also learn how to: Set up printers, scanners, USB flash drives, and other hardware Install and play free games like Frets on Fire and Frozen Bubble as well as commercial hits like Braid and World of Goo Watch DVDs, lis

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Five Reasons to Try Ubuntu From Author Rickford Grant

1. It’s free – and so are practically all the apps you’ll ever need. OK, so yeah, sure this could be said of all Linux distributions, but the Ubuntu Software Center application, which is one of the best maintained set of application repositories out there, makes it easy to find and install all that there is!
2. It’s hardware requirements are pretty low. Which means that you can probably run it on machines you have at home that you thought were lost to the ages. Yes, bring them back to life with Ubuntu.
3. Easy to install. The Ubuntu installer is arguably one of the easiest out there – about on par with a Mac OS installation and definitely easier than a Windows installation. And not only can you install it from a CD, but you can also give it a try first by running it from the CD without so much as touching your hard disk. Hey, you can even run and install it from a USB thumb drive!
4. Meshes pretty well with the Windows world. You have plenty of options when straddling the fence between Windows and Ubuntu. You can have a dual boot system, with separate Windows and Ubuntu environments or install it directly to your hard disk within Windows, using the Wubi installer, and run it from there without pestering your Windows system. In either case, most of your Windows files, fonts, and other goodies will be available to you from within Ubuntu.
5. It’s robust, easy to use, and easily customizable. Yup, you will most likely suffer far fewer, if any, freezes, system crashes, and gradual goop ups than you do in other operating systems, and the whole system is just as point-and- click easy as any other. And if you don’t like the way it looks, you have all sort of customization options available to you.

About the Author

Rickford Grant is the author of Ubuntu for Non-Geeks and Linux Made Easy. He has been an operating system maniac for more than 20 years, from his early days with an Atari XL600 to his current Linux machines. Rickford is the international student advisor at Winston-Salem State University in North Carolina.

Phil Bull is an author of the official Ubuntu documentation and a member of the GNOME documentation project. He has been helping people with computers since his early teens and has been an open source contributor since 2005. Phil currently spends his time studying astrophysics in sunny Oxford, UK.