zoroastr

...I think it really depends on how involved you want to get with the OS. You can install a very user-friendly, hold-your-hand-all-the-way distro like Ubuntu if you like. This has the advantage of being basically the same as a Winbloze install...easy, straightforward, most decisions made for you, etc. you'll get a great, functional OS with lots of bells and whistles and FAR less bloatware than a Win build. This is probably the best choice for 90% of new-to-Linux users. Alternatively, if you really want to build the thing from the ground up and make all the decisions yourself (window manager, services, applications, functional role of the box, etc.), then you might want to go with something like Arch Linux, which has EXCELLENT documentation, but basically just gets you a kernel and shell and lets you build out from there. This is what I did, and I've been VERY happy with the result. I'm running Gnome over Arch and over the past couple of years, I've had alot of fun developing a system that is perfectly suited to its role. Along the way, I've learned a lot about hardware, kernel install and maintenance, window managers, RAID, remote access and lots of other kewl stuff... I'm putting together a new Win7 box right now just as a fun gaming project, but I have not regretted building the Linux system at all, and use it as my main PC all the time now. It's current uptime is over four months, with no perceptible performance degradation. --hope this helps