i have acer travelmate 4150 and windows xp as os and shifting to ubuntu but im wondering if the drivers for my laptop would disappear after the installation? please help me clear my mind on this...thnx

The drivers are for windows so have very little bearing on Linux, Once you install Ubuntu you may need to get drivers for some of your hardware but their are guides all over for how to set it up. The only drivers which are present in Windows which can be use by Linux are network drivers but there will often be an opensource driver for your hardware to get you sorted.

Hi :)

Ubuntu has it's own drivers and uses them. When you reboot into Windows the Windows drivers will be loaded again. I think you are getting confused with firmware upgrades which are then used by either/any OS. The actual drivers are kept on the hard-drive in places the OS normally looks to find drivers. Ubuntu & Windows have their own parts of the hard-drive to keep all this type of thing separate.

Try putting the Ubuntu Cd in the dvd-drive and boot-up to the menu and choose "Try Ubuntu without changes to this machine"
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LiveCD
This gives you a good demo of Ubuntu and then when you reboot the machine and remove the Cd it will be as tho Ubuntu had never been used at all, Windows will boot normally.

It is usually a good idea to try a LiveCd session before installing any linux system just to see if you like the look and feel and to check the hardware works easily enough for you. If the hardware doesn't instantly work there are usually fairly simple things to try (such as the boot-options). Occasionally it can be a little more complicated in which case i tend to use a different distro and perhaps return to try Ubuntu again another day.

I hope this help? Please let us know how this goes or let us know any other worries you might have about trying Ubuntu's LiveCd. There is a lot of FUD out there and hearing the things that people worry about can be amusing but it is better to make sure that a concern is FUD and not a genuine issue. A lot of us can still remember some of the fears we had before actually trying Ubuntu and can now laugh at ourselves over some of those things.

Good luck and regards from
Tom :)