I've been using linux for about 10 years.
You're best bet, to have a solid experience, is to use Ubuntu. It's the most user (read: n00b) friendly distro there is IMHO. Try to leave all ideas you have in your head of how an operating system should work and you'll love it.
http://www.ubuntu.com/[/QUOTE
A very easy way to get a rough feel for it, to see if it's something that really interests you, is to grab one that runs entirely off of a CD. Just pop the disc in, set BIOS to boot off your optical drive first, and bam, you're running Linux. When you get bored, shut down, remove the CD, and there's your Windows, entirely untouched. Knoppix is the last one I played with.
will have to give this option a try
Been running Linux for years...cannot remember the first year, but I do remember the distro - Slackware 1.2. Linux has come a long way since then.
Ubuntu is common and there is a good sized community to offer support. SuSE is another good distro that has a large user base. As long as you are willing to take the time to learn, you will do fine. For the most part anymore, it is point and click for most "jobs".
Always have a copy of some linux distro installed on a machine somewhere. Always need windows installed though as gaming is a strong requirement. There is also a bunch of rather vital software which just plain can't work on linux regardless of tricks and methods so again i need a copy of windows for using these applications on a daily basis.
I hear you on the gaming. At least that list is getting smaller!
Crap. Now I'm sitting here thinking that I need to set up a Linux box. See what you guys did?
I used to use linux, but in the end I got OSX working on my PC and prefer it dramatically to linux or windows...
I had a go with OSX on one of my compatible boxes for a few months and just really couldn't get to grips with it easily, wasn't a huge fan. But well, after 10 years using windows it's probably to be expected.