Installing the Ubuntu distribution is very easy and provides a secure and stable alternative to the Microsoft Windows operating system. Firstly you need to make sure that you have enough free space on the selected hard drive that you are intending to install the Ubuntu distribution to. Resizing a Windows partition is a good way to make some space for the Ubuntu installation and allow you to have enough space for the installation and your /home folder, which will give you a lot of breathing room. Installing the distribution from the Live CDROM is the easiest way, you can continue to use the desktop and browse the web whilst the Installation is proceeding in the background. If you are installing the distribution from a USB thumb drive then the process will be much faster and smoother, then once the installation has completed then you may reboot the machine, remove the installation media when prompted and then enjoy you all new Linux installation ready to be used for any work you need to perform. The Windows 8 distribution is easy to install as shown by the recent Consumer Preview, but the many bugs and the dumb-ed down interface make it a Windows version to stay away from. I have written before about the stupid Metro interface. Xfce is better than the Metro interface, the retro design and speedy interface are appealing.
More so than anything that Microsoft can turn out. But the Unity desktop is something else altogether; using the MacOS styled dock arranged vertically, it is a desktop rather like the Macintosh operating systems desktop, but it would make more sense to have the dock arranged horizontally instead, that would make more sense on a modern wide-screen display, then you would have a little more screen real-estate horizontally and you could make the dock nice and small to give a little more room vertically, especially if you auto-hide the top panel. Gnome Shell auto-hides the side dock and the workspace browser. And it is more customizable than the Unity desktop. Such a desktop is not a good look for Ubuntu, a supposedly top-tier Linux distribution that is advertised all over the Internet. I have even seen an Adsense advertisement that was advertising the Unity desktop interface. A waste of Google Adwords if ever I saw one. Ubuntu was very good until the Unity desktop was introduced and then it went downhill. But just install the lubuntu-desktop package with the sudo apt-get install lubuntu-desktopand then you may enjoy a super fast icewm styled desktop without the bloat if you are installing Linux on a Pentium 4 machine. That is possible. Best to use Ubuntu with a smaller desktop such as the lubuntu-desktop package or even xubuntu-desktop.
Ubuntu now has an Arm port, this enables installation on a wider range of devices instead of being restricted to only x86 devices as before. The Linux kernel has some Android code in it and there are versions of Ubuntu for download that are ready to install on an Android device. The Ubuntu distribution is planned as a Smart-phones and tablet operating system, therefore the Unity touch interface. But Google Android has the awesome Marketplace for downloading applications and books, an Ubuntu application store would have a lot of catching up to do. There are many free books available on the Android Marketplace, I have downloaded the epic poem paradise lost by Milton, the story of Lucifer, the angel that was cast out of Heaven to spend his days in Hell, living with his fellow angels in Pandemonium, the area of Hell set aside for Lucifer and his fellows. The writing of the poem unwittingly casts Lucifer as the victim and makes you feel some sympathy for the Devil. They do not write works of literary art like that anymore. The Twilight novels are not literary art by any stretch of the imagination. The Necroscope novels are far superior if you wish to read a vampire novel that contains horror and some violence. The Steven King Dark Tower series is another recommended read.
The last book is incredible. He even referenced the van in the book that hit him in real life and injured him.