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I have heard good and bad about the various Linux platforms, good clean operating system and stable, but not well supported in the mainstream. Dooes anyone run it and if so what are your gripes and praises?

There are different versions of linux and your choice of which one to go with will probably affect your satisfaction with it.

Suze and Ubuntu seem to be the ones I hear about most (I still use Billie-Bob's XP)

btw, you might wanna think about a dual boot system as some M$ products don't work outside of an M$ environment.

And Most games wont work in Linux, its not known for its gaming capability.

Linux has it's uses, but running MS games on it isn't one of them...

Asking what is the best Linux OS is like asking what is the best car. There are so many choices and each one of them does something a bit different or better than the other.

I've installed and used quite a few different versions in the past and Shades is right, SuSE and Ubuntu are very popular.

Another version of Ubuntu is called Kbuntu. Ubuntu uses the GNOME desktop and Kbuntu uses the KDE desktop. I like them both, but KDE seems to be the prefered version. Although, GNOME just released it's new version that has added features that look appealing to the administrator but the end user will notice no new features.

More versions that are quite popular are Linspire and Xandros. Linspire would be better for starting out as they have a feature called "CnR" Warehouse. CnR stands for Click and Run and works quite well. The purpose is to provide you a way to install new software by finding the software on their site and clicking to install it on your system. The drawback? A yearly subscription fee is required to access the CnR Warehouse. This OS is being released at Walmart on Notebook and Full Systems as a cheaper way to sell computers. Keep an eye on this OS as their strategy seems to be aimed at the masses.

Xandros is a pretty good OS too and has the best file manager I've seen on any OS including Windows. It'll access all file systems on your network or local machine regardless of the OS used. Xandro offers a free version and pay-for versions of this OS. The one feature I really don't like in the OS is their Update/Package/Software manager. While it works great, it's here where Xandros trys to sell you additional software, even some that's free on the net under the GNU licence such as Open Office 2.0.x

Now some common parts of the Linux OS...

All Linux OS' uses 'buttons' on the right lower taskbar (where Windows clock is). Most OS' has 4 buttons there that offer a great feature called virtual desktops. If you working on one desktop, (think just one in Windows), you can click to open a fresh desktop to do more or different work on it and you have the option to configure as many as you want. I think I've seen the option in the config for 32 ...

All come with games that are quite popular and there is so much free software out there it's scary. If you're into Office productivity or just like having all the options to open/edit various Office formats such as Word, Abi-Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Corel, etc, Open Office is for you and you can save the Open Office format in the popular extensions as well.

Do you use PIM's such as the popular Outlook program from M$? In Linux, be it GNOME or KDE, they offer PIM's that are free and work great. My personal favorite is Evolution from GNOME, and yes, you can install and run it on KDE

I dual boot XP and Linux. The trick to remember here is, install XP first. XP will write over the boot record and wipe out anything else there. Linux is done better and the GRUB boot loader will pick up any other OS' you have installed and give you the option to boot into the one of your choice.

I hope this gives you enough info to give it a go, but I do recommend dual boot...

I found a great video guide of someone doing a Linux install over Windows.
I'll try and find it for ya and post a link.

[edit: found it first place I looked but it's a for a fresh install with partitions and would delete any other data on the drive. So, forget I said anything. ]

- Shades

[edit: found it first place I looked but it's a for a fresh install with partitions and would delete any other data on the drive. So, forget I said anything. ]

Ummmmm thanks, I think
Appreciate the input, anything specific about Redhat?

Yep, I've used it to and both RedHat and Mandrake (Mandiva) use a software install system called RPM which stands for RedHat Package Manager. RPM's aren't the greatest way to install software as it doesn't check for other files needed to run the software, which by the way has been problematic for the Linux OS' and especially noobies.

Dual booting is really pretty basic. If you have an exsisting XP install, repartition on the fly part of the HD or install a second HD to install Linux to. XP has a built in partitioning tool or you can use the popular Partition Magic program. Big HD's are pretty cheap these days and for Linux, 20gb is more than enough.

Once the partitions in place, most Linux installs have some type of automated installer these days that will "auto format' the open space.

Another option you may want to explore Step is the 'live' version of Linux. Most flavors have one and these will boot off the CD or DVD drive letting you boot into Linux and explore it without installing it on the HD. You can make up your mind then...

FYI, on a personal note, I like any flavor of Linux based on Debian Linux.

I did get a little lesson about "live" booting from a friend of mine and he has Mandrake, RedHat, and a 64 bit version we will play with this weekend.