Jason's post on his holiday experience with Ubuntu has prompted me to look at the $200 Linux Computer we got to gauge the timeline to linux OS coming mainstream.
I started off by reinstalling the OS partly to figure out its ease and partly because I forgot the username and password we used originally. I would agree there is not much to report here. Ubuntu's install process was 7 steps of reading agreements and clicking next. The only trick part for me was the step on setting up the partition. The difficulty I had with this step was more about being scared of the word partition than anything else. After reading and rereading the directions for this step, which were pretty clear, I built up enough courage to do what I thought I should do after reading the directions the first time. It was smooth sailing from there. The hardest problem was getting the computer to eject the CD which is was more about my impatience or the drive than I think the OS.
The desktop is configured more like OS X than Windows XP so that will take a little getting used to but I do not think it will take long before navigating the desktop is second nature. It seems to be set up to allow one to quickly connect to the online tools that one would use in personal day to day life with quick access to firefox, blogger, facebook, youtube, skype, wikipedia and multimedia players.
I jumped right into facebook - which I have a growing affinity for - which launched firefox and boom it was like I was on my comfortable if not trusted XP computer. I plan to play with the media players and downloading another browser in the near future but for now my experience has been positive.