New to Linux - Ubuntu is a Wonderful Thing

Not sure if this is where I should post this, But I just had to say something about my experience!

I am new to Linux and recently built a dual boot desktop system with Ubuntu 14.04.4 and Windows XP. I had about 14 years of history on that XP system which finally failed, so needed to retain access to that data and many associated programs. I just have to say how thankful I am to the Ubuntu developers...not one problem! I downloaded the ISO image and bued the DVD, then began the installation. Frankly, I expected to likely have some problems with something so new to me, but the installation was flawless. All necessary drivers loaded without incident, and I was using Ubuntu in just a few minutes. The system was up and ruing well without any proprietary software. AMAZING! My AMD Radeon video card was fully supported with hardware acceleration, with the drivers fuished in Ubuntu. The only drivers I had to manually install were for my Epson printer and scaer. Linux drivers were available and they are just as full-featured as my XP drivers and work flawlessly.

I have UEFI BIOS, and there were no problems with that. I have separate hard drives for XP and Ubuntu, and had discoected my XP drive during the Ubuntu installation just in case there might be a problem that could affect my XP drive. After the successful Ubuntu installation I recoected the XP drive, and after another boot cycle found that Ubuntu then automatically installed GRUB 2.0 on its own for OS selection at boot. It is not possible that this could have been a better experience. After nearly 2 months I have had no issues or problems with the system. No system hangs or BSODS. Any new installation of any Windows version I have had in the past was definitely not this trouble-free. There is an incredibly large number of programs available. All the ones I have installed thus far are free, including two marvelous astronomy programs that are every bit as good as the astronomy program I have for XP (that was not free). I have really only begun to explore what's available. Kudos, much kudos and more kudos to the developers and the community that supports them!

I did do some research in advance to pick system components that would likely work well with both XP 32 bit and Ubuntu 64 bit systems. The XP side of things for me did limit the selection to motherboards and video cards that are backward compatible. I would like to give the list of the most critical compatible components that I used, in case there are other persons out there that seek to preserve their many years of XP or other Windows version history, while also installing a great new OS that will serve them well for the future (no more Windows versions!). Of course this list is also fine for a new Ubuntu system without a dual boot configuration with XP (from what I have read, there is a very wide range of Linux-compatible components, indeed). I think it would be unusual to encounter a component that was not compatible.

For my dual boot XP/Ubuntu system:
Motherboard – ASUS M5A97 R2.0
Processor – AMD FX-4300
Video – VisionTek Radeon 4650 PCIe

Also used WD Black 1 TB Disk Drive, Vantec PCIe 800/400 Firewire, 8GB Kingston Hyper-X memory and LG Super-Multi DVD writer - no problems.