Greetings from western Kentucky.

[feyd]

Hi there. Just thought I'd check in and see how wide of an area in Kentucy this group covers... I'm down in Murray, in the southwestern corner of the state. I was first introduced to Ubuntu by getting a Live CD from a friend, who got it from another friend... you know how it goes.

At the moment I'm not running Ubuntu on my computer, as the CD I have is several versions old, and I decided I'd check on a more recent version before installing... and seeing as how Feisty is launching tomorrow, I guess I picked the right time to look for a new version. *laughs*

I'm currently running a dual-boot XP/Vista machine, and don't intend to replace either one with Ubuntu... mostly I'm just wanting to play around with Linux some, and from what I've seen Ubuntu is one of the best distros out there. I'm also thinking of using it as the OS on a project computer of mine (if I ever get the thing finished... I need to drop in a power supply and video card so I can test and see whether the motherboard and processor that's in it still work) and figured that working with it now would be a great way to evaluate it for that box.

I'm interested in learning more about Linux, but I may or may not be overly active in this forum... to be honest, I tend to find a lot of Linux people to be very pushy, and I have a friend who for the longest time was constantly badgering me about switching to Linux until I finally got him to leave me alone about it. That's not saying that any of you are like that... I'm hoping that you're not, so that I can really get to know more about y'all and Ubuntu. However, right off the bat I guess I should say that I tend to like Microsoft products and OpenOffice makes me want to hit fragile computer parts with hammers. *laughs* If you can forgive me of these two things, though, then I guess we can get along fine. *smiles*

[Zuph]

The best thing about the Ubuntu community is that we're not overly push or arrogant. Even if you want to do something that is totally against all logical best practices, we'll help you with it.

The Ubuntu-KY group is centered around Lexington, with small enclaves in Northern Kentucky and Louisville. Most of the action happens in Lexington, though.

That said, the best way to learn Linux is to go for near complete immersion. I had tried to play around with it before, but I always got frustrated and went back to windows. Dapper helped me a lot in that regard, because my network card worked out of box, which meant I could seek help while IN Linux. This solved the majority of my previous problems. Still, if your goal is to learn Linux, the best strategy is to completely immerse yourself in it. I only use my windows partition for gaming.

Linux isn't any more difficult than windows, It's just different.

[feyd]

Thanks for the info. Largely what I'm going to be using the installation that I'm going to put on my current PC for is some general learning of how to navigate Ubuntu and how to customize it a bit... hopefully I'm going to get my other PC up and running soon, and it will most likely be Ubuntu only. My current computer is going to be used primarily for work and gaming from that point, with the other one being strictly for casual computing and learning Linux. I see where you're coming from with the "total emersion" thing, and I can definitely see the advantages of it (especially in something as adaptable as Linux.)

I have some friends up in Lexington and Louisville that keep bugging me saying that I need to come up and visit, so I'm hoping to travel up that way at least semi-regularly as soon as I get a car that actually runs (mine's currently having one problem after another). I'm also very glad to hear that you've got a good community here, as I like being able to relate to others and learn from them but it tends to be very off-putting when they seem to think they're part of some upper-crust or elite group.

One thing that I meant to mention in my first post but seem to have forgotten is that I'm a writer by trade, been doing the freelance thing for over 2 years now and haven't had to go back to having a "real job" yet. Though I'm a little ways from the core of the action, I'm always willing to help out where I can so maybe I'll be able to offer a little bit of my meager skills to assist at some point in the future.

Hope y'all have a great day!

[zackboarman]

You an't the only one in Western Kentucky. I'm from Anton, it's a rual community right out side of Madisonville. There's a few Linux user, only some use ubuntu. Me and some other people started a LUG up in our area, there is a short history (http://forums.madkeylug.org/viewtopic.php?p=2), but it is still a work in progress on the LUG's new site (http://www.madkeylug.org). I have been using ubuntu sence may of '06, sence 6.06 came out, I swiched to Edubuntu, because of LTSP. Haven't upgraded disto's because 1, 6.10 wasen't in shipit (i have dial-up), and 2, 7.04 won't boot because of RAM requirements, I have only 128 MB of ram & the CD requires 256MB of ram.