I trust my router's firewall, and you're probably okay for normal home internet use if you're behind a router. I'd set up a firewall if I were using my box as any kind of server, but I'm fairly lazy about doing it before then: most of the exploits that hit PC's are designed to attack windows vulnerabilities. If you're feeling less foolhardy than I, you have a hardcore firewall called IPTables installed by default, but it's basically sitting there for now.

Antivirus is unnecessary.

(Note that I don't mean that nothing can happen. Just that the risks are vastly lower, to the point where "I don't bother" is a reasonable response where I'd never dream of such a thing on Windows.)

As for apps, you've probably got a ton of stuff already if you went with the default install (in fact, one of the reasons I picked xubuntu over the standard version is that it installs so much *less* stuff). The one place where I think Ubuntu is really weak out of the box is multimedia stuff -- a lot of very standard things (Java, Flash, mp3's) are on one restricted license or another, so they aren't installed as part of the base system. Grab EasyUbuntu [link] instead of hunting them all down.

(okay, I spent way too long on that post, as I was essentially being disturbingly x-posty with Gud but 20 minutes later...)

Also, my internet conenction feels considerably slower. I'm not sure what's causing it, but any page I load seems to be taking three or four times longer to load than normal (the advantage to generally cruising a very small, select group of Internet sites -- you get a very good feel for average load times).

Grab EasyUbuntu [link] instead of hunting them all down.

Oh sure, do it the easy way. If EasyUbuntu has a problem (which it probably won't) then that web page will help you install everything old-school.

I would concur with amych that you don't need to worry about security if you are behind a firewall. Even if you aren't I'm not sure that Ubuntu has much in the way of open ports by default.

I set up a new user and I've got my right-click and File back. I'm running a virus check to see if any of the freedup user specific files might be screwed, but I think I'm OK. I just need to set up my IE favorites again

Not sure about the network speed issue. Is it wired or wireless? If it is wireless, then it might be a driver problem (wireless can be troublesome due to lack of support from hardware vendors). If it is wired, then I'm not sure what is going on.

It's wired. It's still performing DSLish speed, faster than dialup (more or less -- B.org loads pretty fast under any circumstances), but it's noticeably slower than it was under my Windows environment.

Also, I downloaded and installed EasyUbuntu, and the download page begged me to run two command strings after it was installed. I do that from the terminal, yes? (which is what I did, and it seemed to do useful things, and not make the machine explode)

it seemed to do useful things, and not make the machine explode

Excellent work, young Jedi! Learn to love the terminal.

Like I said, I used to play with Unix way back when -- not as an operating system on one of my own computers, but through the BBS I hung out in at the time. Still, it was all LUI back then, so the terminal isn't really that intimidating. And (if I read the documentation correctly) the system won't let me do anything with potential to screw things up unless I sudo (which was included in the aforementioned command strings, but I trusted them, and they begged and stuff).

Next time I'm down at my parents house I might have to see if I can dig up the old CP/M machine that I had. It was in a home made plywood case with an 8" floppy drive. I'd have to hook it up to a dumb terminal to get the full effect.

I came in to post this as an add-on to the Ubuntu tips, but it occurs me that it's multi-platform and very cool: Is anyone else using Democracy Player? It's an iTunes-y looking video podcast aggregator, video player, and bittorrent client; it plays a whole slew of video formats, handles high definition, downloads YouTube/Google Vid content and (possibly) takes out the trash.

Good thing hard drives are cheap these days. Oy.

Next time I'm down at my parents house I might have to see if I can dig up the old CP/M machine that I had. It was in a home made plywood case with an 8" floppy drive. I'd have to hook it up to a dumb terminal to get the full effect.

Dude, I'd make a Frankenbox merit badge for this if you didn't already own the category.

because, yes, I am once again wasting time