Ubuntu vs Kubuntu: The closest Windows experience [closed]

"All the tasks you list can be easily achieved on either desktop environment. But few of them will be quite like how you are used to them on Windows.

I find the choice of desktop environment to be a pretty personal thing based on how you work, one of them will simply feel more natural to you than the other. (e.g I can't stand using a KDE box - but other people would hate to use my GNOME desktop on a day to day basis).

IMO you're probably best off trying both from the included Live Desktop environment and seeing which one feels best.

I've included some hints on how to achieve what you ask for below:

Web Browsing, Firefox 3 on KDE or Gnome will be most like you are used to.
Working with Office 03/07 documents, you will find that OpenOffice will open either - but won't save to 2007 format, this shouldn't be a problem, the native file formats open on up to date copies of Office 2007 anyway, or you can save to the old style .doc formats.
File Indexing/Search - Tracker/Beagle on Gnome, not sure on the KDE options.
Media Playing - Both Kubuntu and Ubuntu should offer to download codecs for you within one or two clicks
Windows Live - KDE will use Kopete, Gnome will use Empathy or Pidgin. All of these should feel quite natural - if feature bare to you coming from a Windows background.
Skype can be installed and works quite well, though you may experience some difficulties with PulseAudio - there are work arounds all over the internet though.
Organising Millions of Files - Here you will find that the command shell (""Bash"") serves you well. If you'd rather avoid this I suggest you use a lightweight file-browser such as Thunar which will be more responsive than Nautilus(Gnome) or Dolphin(KDE).
On the FTP front I find GNOME to be light-years ahead of anything I've used - its easy to mount almost any remote resource as a directory using the 'Places' toolbar. On KDE you can probably use Konquror or possibly Dolphin."

"Mint is a popular rebuild of Ubuntu with a few ticks to make Windows users more comfortable (menu, installer, et al).

I suggest you just go with Mint - I have it on two desktops and am happy."

"Mint is a popular rebuild of Ubuntu with a few ticks to make Windows users more comfortable (menu, installer, et al).

I suggest you just go with Mint - I have it on two desktops and am happy."

"KDE/Kubuntu is more like Vista/7.
GNOME/Ubutnu is more like Windows XP.

But above all, Linux is NOTHING LIKE Windows. The completely unrelated development philosophy means that the system is fundamentally different, witht the biggest difference being the goal of a Linux installation supporting multiple human users at the same time while Windows tries to enforce a limit of just one so that they can sell more licenses."