How user friendly is Linux?

Are you sure it doesn't speed up the computer? I wanted to upgrade from 512 mb ram to 2 gb but decided to try linux first and see if it can make the computer run faster.

Well you certainly semm to have had problems with Linux, but that is mostly due to you expecting Ubuntu to start working like Windows straight away. Do not forget that you probably have years of experience with Windows and that Windows is easy due to familiarity. You have not begun learning Linux yet. It is different from Windows just as Coffee is different from lime juice and different people have different preferences. You do not like using the terminal, but I personally have found that in many cases, the terminal is a faster and more informative way to run programs. When my VLC player suddenly did not play a DVD, I ran it under the console to find the source of hardware error. The same could not be done in Windows when for some reason my VLC player does not give good sound quality when playing DVDs. When you are doing something that is potentially damaging to the system and alters the core behaviour of the system, it is always good to have a layer of protection. If you do not like typing passwords and are confident of what you are doing, just log in as root. You CAN log in as root in Ubuntu. It does not speed up the computer, but you can disable some programs and the computer will be faster. And if you want it to be really fast, use the Xfce environment. OSs using this environment are faster than Windows, in my experience. Linux is more stable. It does not need to be rebooted whenever a major program is downloaded, and hangs less frequently than Windows. However, apps running under KDE do hang sometimes. In most cases you do not need drivers for the hardware, because they are installed with the OS and worked fine for me. While there are occasional problems with some hardware for some OSs, you can always try some other live CD distro. They are very cheap after all. The prime factor is the time you are willing to invest in learning a new system. If you have little time then Linux is not for you. However, if you are interested, it will potentially save you a lot of money in the long run by freeing you from vendor lock in with Microsoft.

For me there was no increase in speed at all. Watching videos and listening to music was actually slower. Linux can't play encrypted DVDs either, since it does not include the codec necessary to play them. You need to buy a DVD program that includes that codec, or illegally download the necessary codec.

Of course it's different, that is why people compare them. How can you know which is better if you don't compare them? I personally don't consider linux free. In my mind time is money. If it takes 3 to 4 days to get linux fully functional, that's wasted time that could have been spent doing something useful. 3 days at 8 hours per day is 24 hours 24 hours times $16/hour (my payrate as a computer tech) is $384.00 With Windows XP Home only costing $89, and Vista Home Premium costing about $111, I can't say you're really saving anything wasting time and frustration on linux.

I've downloaded Ubuntu already. Will try it first, then I'll try Fedora if Ubuntu doesn't work. It seems there are a million different distributions to chose from!