1. Flame the OP
2. ???
3. Profit

I am reading this right now, and have found it very helpful in building good Java programming habits.

I really think the only reason Windows is "ready to use out of the box" is that modern hardware is designed with Windows in mind. M$ forces the hardware manufacturers to do things "the Microsoft way" through market bullying tactics. In many ways, my ubuntu installation worked as well out of the box as any Windows XP installation ever has on my machine. And for the record, even m$ products don't work right out of the box for "the average computer user." I did microsoft tech support for a long time, and I can tell you that many "average users" (ie, shouldnt own a computer) are not happy with an OS installation process no matter how easy it is. For my money, Ubuntu does everything it should for a desktop system and gets most of it right.