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Alright, so My windows vista has been heading downhill rapidly lately, so I'm getting a new OS, opinions on Ubuntu? If it's not good I'm going with Win 7

I use Ubuntu and I think it is a really good OS. I found it to be nice and simple to install, and it's just as easy to use. If you want to run Windows programs on it, install Wine (a Windows emulator) as well. I've even managed to install and run Quake 3 successfully. One thing to bear in mind though, Ubuntu uses OpenGL and not DirectX.

There are a couple of little things you will need to get used to, for example, the minimise, restore and close window buttons are on the opposite side of the screen.

There are loads of usefull free applications that can be installed, including Blender, Gimp and VLC Media Player and many, many others.

The only downside is that sometimes it can be a bit touchy about what hardware you have. I was lucky, I didn't have any compatibility issues, but that's not to say that you won't. The only way you'll find out is to try it and see for yourself.

I love it I use it more than I use Windows, It tends to be way more reliable than windows (not hard I know), The Windows compatible of wine is always improving (only one or 2 of My Windows programmes are incompatible) I don't recommend running games on it though unless they're Open-GL based because the Direct-X support is a little limited at the moment.

I still have my XP partition but that will be gone when Microsoft drop support for XP then it'll be purely Linux only (Im doing this because I have a 360 so I don't have to worry about DirectX) overall I think Linux is generally superior to Windows.

If you find that you still have the need to use Windows applications I recommend either installing a partition with you're chosen version of windows or installing windows under a virtual machine within Ubuntu.

I use a version of Ubuntu which I have tailored to my needs over time - runs perfectly and I use it more or less for everything. That is unless I want to do gaming or development, in which case I switch over to my XP x64 partition.

I have updates turned off on both. Why? Because they both work exactly as I want them to. Oh, and I don't run AV on either

Ubuntu is a great operating system, though i do not suggest it if you have just casually decided to change operating system. Ubuntu is different to windows in many ways, and requires a lot of learning. The first problem i had was just installing programs, no installers in ubuntu, you either get a .deb package and let the package manager do the best, find the program you want in the software center or find someone else's command line install for it.

I personally love ubuntu, its so quick and down to business. The idea of having more then one desktop is just brilliant. If you want to try it out try google "Wubi" or check out a virtual machine.

it depends, you play games? then no, dont get ubuntu. but if not then it might pay off

I use Mint, which is based on Ubuntu. It was easier to install than Windows.

I just realised my computer hasn't crashed once since switching to linux. Firefox has crashed a couple of times when on Youtube but that's it.

I too have this problem from time to time. I have found its the version of flash for 64bit linux, its still i beta. They dont mention that in the software center

Ubuntu is pretty good. I had it installed on my laptop a couple of months ago and grew very fond of it.

The only things I didn't like about it were pretty small, but kind of annoying nonetheless.

For example, my laptop's sound card is not 100% compatible with Ubuntu, and as a result my headphone jack didn't work; so I couldn't ever plug in headphones to listen to things privately. Everything I tried to fix that did not work. I simply have to wait until somebody codes a driver for it.

Gaming support is pretty limited on it as well. I didn't even bother trying to do things with WINE (I couldn't even figure out how to install things under WINE) to run games for Windows either.

And lastly, video editing support is also fairly limited. No commercial software is being made for Ubuntu yet, so you're stuck with free, open-source software that's either not buggy but doesn't have all of the advanced features you need to edit video, or has all of the features you need but is really unstable.

But for the actual OS itself, I would definitely recommend it. It's pretty great once you get used to it.

Ubuntu is great. I honestly don't think it's any less "user-friendly" than Windows or Mac. I love the Software Center especially in the new version of Ubuntu (10.10) that came out on Sunday. It makes much more sense than installers. It's like the App store for smart phones, but you can add 3rd party repositories to it and install anything just by browsing the Center then double clicking what you want. It's brilliant.

As for support/help. If you had never used Windows your entire life and turned it on for the first time, it would be difficult to figure things out without going online, reading a book, or asking a friend for help. Anything new is going to be different and confusing. However, I find that Ubuntu has better online support than any other OS I've used. (I currently have a computer with 7 and two with OS X, and use them extensively). If you know where to go you can get some good help.
http://askubuntu.com/ is a great place to go. If you can't find an answer to your question, there's a good chance that it will be answered within minutes of you posting it.
http://ubuntuforums.org is a good place as well. I find that askubuntu (and other Stack Exchange sites) are the best place to ask questions though.
I also like to keep my eye on omgubuntu.co.uk for tips, tricks, nice apps, and updates.

Oh, I almost forgot. I'd like to also discredit the common "if you game, don't linux" mindset people have. They're still stuck in the previous decade (same with the people who say, "linux is for nerds" or, "i wouldn't recommend it to someone just wanting to casually change"). Lets fast forward to today, now, shall we?
http://appdb.winehq.org/ - list of the 30 most popular games that run in wine perfectly, near-perfectly, and close-enough-to-perfectly. I haven't played many modern games, but it looks like there are some goodies in there. StarCraft 2 runs perfectly. WoW (unfortunately) works great. I personally like to play Steam games on my computer and the only problem I have is Steam's custom-made GUI tends to wig out a big. And this is just the Wine games.
Now, before anyone says anything, I'm going to say: yes, I know that's not all the games. But not every console game runs/was ported on the XBox360. I think people would be shocked at how well things run in Linux these days.

Thanks all, I'll be downloading it soon and installing it next to my current windows OS, and if I like it enough after a couple of months I'll probably install it over my current OS