I agree with Hans in many respects. I too have been mainly a "path of least resistance" Red Hat user for some of the reasons he describes, although I have bought/installed SuSE, Slackware, others over the past few years, and I don't consider my Red Hat choice binding (Hey, RH, where's that KOffice 1.1 RPM!?!). I'm starting to learn a bit more about Debian.

I would also recommend getting 2-3 recent distributions and installing each to kick the tires. The various Linux installs have gotten so much better over the past couple of years that you can manage a full install on a moderately speedy machine (with attention to CD speed) in 45 minutes or so. Try to get most recent distros so you are comparing apples to apples. If you are looking to perhaps shelter yourself for a while from the process of compiling source code to add applications, then take a look at the distro's system for adding pre-built applications (RPM, app-get) as well.

One thing I would advise is that, regardless of what distro you ultimately decide to work with, you might want to "over-install" a bit. Assuming you've got a big, cheap hard drive, adding components such as "development tools" (languages, compilers, libraries) early on on a blanket basis means that you won't have to go back and add them one by one when the day comes that you do want to compile a particular oddball app.

Agree: a turn for the worse with XP. I don't understand what reason a thoughtful CTO/CIO in a Windows 2000 shop could find for upgrading especially given the licensing changes. Problem is, in 1-2 years, that CTO won't be able to buy a copy of Windows 2000 and it will be XP -- take it or.... Yes, it's an especially good juncture to be looking at Linux.

Lastly, if I can recommend a piece of reading it would be a sub to Linux Journal (published a few blocks away from here). It's sometimes an odd mix of articles, but I think it does a really excellent job of giving folks like me a good sense of what's going on out there -- what's possible with Linux. Great recent security articles. Hey, about 20 percent of it flies over my head, but that's OK. I get the drift!

Jim