Ubuntu

First impressions are important in many areas of life, and Ubuntu certainly scores highly. Booting off the cd gives a crisp, responsive system loaded with useful applications. Windows always seems to be running stuff in the background that I haven't asked it to, as well as regular anti virus updates and scans and the rest, and never seems to be as responsive as I'd like. Ubuntu is a much nicer experience all round, with Firefox starting immediately. All of the graphical bells and whistles are present if you want them - transparent windows, whizzy desktop switching and the rest.

Installing it is a breeze and within fifteen minutes I had a fully working dual boot system, with the ability to view my existing windows files. I imported my music library into the Rhythmbox player and started playing stuff straight away. All of my office documents work in Open Office, and there are games and utilities that you simply select from the Package Manager which are then installed automagically for you.

I'd avoided installing linux for a long time through sheer inertia, but I'd certainly recommend anybody who's hesitating to give Ubuntu 7.04 a whirl.