Windows XP replacement -> Ubuntu.

[Shakti]

My advice to you would be that you try it out in the live CD scenario a bit before you decide to install it. You may also try to run it from a USB stick in case you don't want to wait for the media to arrive. You can use a tool such as UNetbootin - Homepage and Downloads to create a bootable (and installable) USB.

If you don't find the default Ubuntu interface to be of your liking I would advice you to try a version called XUbuntu. What they have done is that instead of using the normal Ubuntu interface they have replaced it with an interface called XFCE. Other than that it is the same as normal Ubuntu. There are other versions as well, for instance KUbuntu which uses KDE. But try the normal Ubuntu first and see what you think about it.

Other than that, since it is an XP machine I assume the hardware is a couple of years old, which means there are likely working drivers for it. Getting sounds to work completely right is something I have found that can be frustrating but Ubuntu usually handles that well aswell. Other than that I can't think of any real gotchas you will run into, other than the fact that software installations will work in a completely different manner compared to the Windows way.

[Epy]

Getting sounds to work completely right is something I have found that can be frustrating but Ubuntu usually handles that well aswell.

I have found that using PulseAudio instead of ALSA directly helps programs with glitchy audio playback. Never had to mess with anything on the driver side.

[Yarin]

The irony... It's palpable.

You sound like you might be a little out of the loop.

I have found that using PulseAudio instead of ALSA directly helps programs with glitchy audio playback.

Yeah, I can vouch for this. Though, using ALSA directly always works fine for me when PulseAudio isn't around to begin with.

[Alpo]

You sound like you might be a little out of the loop.

I feel like I just got to the twist in a M.Night Shyamalan movie.

[Shakti]

I have found that using PulseAudio instead of ALSA directly helps programs with glitchy audio playback. Never had to mess with anything on the driver side.

I recently had some issues getting stuff to use my USB sound card instead of the (dead) built-in one, and had an issue where Skype notifications would pause all other sounds. Both of these are solved now but were cause for some frustration. Not though, I am not using Ubuntu, and Ubuntu actually handled these things just fine. Not saying that they are big issues but audio setup is something I have found that can be a little tricky on Linux.