Présentation générale de Ubuntu : http://dane.ac-lyon.fr/spip/GNU-Linux-Ubuntu-de-la-decouverte-298?ticket=
Configuration pour usage général et scientifique.
I use Ubuntu 14.04.3 on recent PC and also a quite old Dell laptop (7 years). This is the last LTS (long term support) version. Kernel will be upgraded according https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/Support?action=AttachFile&do=get&target=14.04.x+Ubuntu+Kernel+Support+Schedule.png until Apr 2019. Depending specific case, you could install and stay on Ubuntu 14.04.1, or better migrate with a dist-upgrade in july 2016 towards the next 16.04.1 LTS
Concerning the Ubuntu flavours (http://www.ubuntu.com/about/about-ubuntu/flavours), you can choose it depending of your personnal prefs. Personnaly, as i don't specially like Unity, i prefer either xfce (modern but simple) from Xubuntu or GNOME (nice effects). From time to time i tried KDE desktop but never use it regularly. Anyway some “K” applications are very useful.
Il is easy to install many desktop, i.e. by “sudo apt-get install
gnome-shell gnome-coreubuntu-gnome-desktop kubuntu-desktop xubuntu-desktop”.Help can be obtained from http://askubuntu.com/
lspci | grep VGA
A développer
lspci | grep VGA
sudo apt-get install synaptic
sudo apt-get install gnome-shell
sudo apt-get install gnome-session-fallback
→ il faudra choisir la session au démarrage
sudo wget http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/oneiric.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get -y --force-yes install medibuntu-keyring sudo apt-get upgrade -y sudo apt-get install --reinstall ubuntu-restricted-extras non-free-codecs libdvdread4 libdvdcss2
sudo apt-get install openjdk-7-jre
sudo apt-get install chromium-browser
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:chromium-daily/ppa sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install filezilla inkscape scribus scite glabels grsync xsane gimp keepassx mplayer vlc mozilla-plugin-vlc unison unison-gtk geany wammu gebabbel gpsbabel pidgin pdfsam hugin ghex codeblocks build-essential qrencode libdecodeqr-examples avidemux audacity recordmydesktop xournal fontmatrix dia digikam gparted guvcview