Last week I went to the Shuttleworth Foundation in Durbanville and got Ubuntu 9.10, which I then installed on a pc whose only function is to download torrent stuff during the night.
The installation went quite smoothly, the pc is a Pentium 4 with no unusual hardware.
However, when it got to the point where I had to get Ubuntu to connect to the internet, I eventually gave up - I could not get this to work. The networking concept in Ubuntu has me baffled.
I should make it clear that I am not an IT professional, and my networking knowledge is quite poor. I can make my PC's in my house talk to each other, and set up a LAN game, but that's about it.
I would not recommend installing Linux to an average computer user, I think doing it successfully requires a far above-average knowledge of computers, their hardware peripherals, and networking.
I also don't have the inclination to spend the next year of my preciously little free time learning how to resolve a petty networking issue... and I don't know anyone whom I can ask for assistance. Too bad, I thought Ubuntu would be fun.