Yes I finally did it, removed Microsoft from my life; replacing Windows 8.1 was no snap decision though. The last time I took a look at Ubuntu early in its life cycle, it was nowhere near replacing a fully functional desktop OS such as Windows - but its come on leaps and bounds since then I'm very pleased to say.
While you do still need some command line skills the dependence can be softened with the use of Google of which there are endless support forums and help easily at hand. Plus the Ubuntu software store which means installing software is much easier than 4-5yrs ago.
I didn't realise the new 14.04 LTS (long term support) release was round the corner when I started the migration from Microsoft so I also went through an upgrade the day after install too, which I'm pleased to say was painless.....
Anyway some of the features I was hoping to have appeared in Ubuntu still haven't made it for home computing just yet. SMB shares for example are a slight ball ache to sort out, needing an app called Gigolo to auto connect and bookmark shares. Its a good work around but does need some set up.
UK keyboard didn't seem to work properly post install, however a fix was at hand from the command line so not all was lost.
Flash Player (which the BBC website still depends on) installation into Chromium needed quite a bit of messing about (instructions are here) and this I guess is typical of various fixes and if you have some experience of Android file system you will get an idea of where everything goes.I'm also a heavy user of Mozilla's Thunderbird email program which in Windows has a handy utility to back up your settings and email into a handy single file, however there is no Mozbackup that works on Ubuntu...this caused me some concern and something I should have checked before I jumped. Luckily it was just a case of unzipping the file and then placing the contents into the profiles folder of the Thunderbird installation, again Google helped out there !
I could go on, and you are wondering if it was all worth it, well yes it is - its a free OS for a start and very powerful - lots of fantastic apps and programs, many are more functional than the Windows counterparts. Having made the leap into Google Docs and Drive means I don't have to worry what OS I'm running as everything is cloud based of course I can use Libre Office if I'm offline and sync my items later - highly recommend you start to look away from Micosoft's Office if you haven't already.
What I do like with Ubuntu is many of the apps pre-installed are highly usable right out the box, something that cant be said for Windows 8, but the biggest learning point of all here is; you have choice, many think the only PCs to buy are Windows based. Sure you can use the walled garden of Apples Mac OS - again you are tied in more so than Micosoft has with its new Windows 8.1 signin process, something which led me to take a second look at Ubuntu in the first place.
Microsoft have made it very difficult to move away from its OS by using various methods to discourage you from using YOUR hardware with Ubuntu or other Linux distributions, of which causes me to want away even more. If I bought the PC then I want to run what I like on it.
You can try Ubuntu (risk free) by installing the OS onto a USB stick and booting from that - if you are using a newer PC then you will need to disable some "security" features in the BIOS but I must say Ubuntu 14.04 is well worth checking out.
Check out Ubuntu and download, here.