[Michael Auchter]

I would definitely recommend going for a not so userfriendly distribution, but not one that is extremely difficult for new users (gentoo, LFS). I find that slackware is just right: not difficult to install, but doesn't do everything for you like mandrake does. Personally, I use Slack 9.1 on my main computer (kernel 2.6.0), Vector 4 on my server (2.4.22 i believe... gotta get around to updating that to at least 2.4.24...), and Fedora Core 2 on my laptop (2.6.2). Fedora is the first rpm based distro I have used, and so far it is pretty nice.

also, as ............... said, your choice of windowmanager will make a big impact on your opinion... but what you chose depends on your tastes; if you are used to normal explorer on windows, then i would use either kde or gnome because they are very similiar to explorer. if you already use bb4win or litestep, then you may be more comfortable using something like blackbox, enlightenment, or pekwm.

also, if you do dualboot, use windows as an absolute last resort. in fact, the way that i learned linux was by deleting windows. you see, i love my computer so much that i was forced to figure out how to get things working the way they should be... if i had windows installed, i probably would have just given up sometimes and gone back to using it. a few years using solely linux, i have never looked back on the switch.