Hmmm....I hope my little review didn't put people off Linux, I was just recounting my off-the-cuff thoughts as I thought I made clear.
I should say that on SuSe 9 installed cleanly on the very first run. It found every one of my devices (including my extra Promise Ultra66 IDE controller) without prompting or errors and booted cleanly first shot. There was none of the tinkering with X Window that I'd had to do with previous Linuxes to get the mouse working or anything. The install has a HUGE database of hardware and will find most things unless it's something very esoteric (and if it is there's almost always an answer on the Net).
It didn't recognise the G450 video card, but installed a very workable driver that it thought would be OK and it was - I even had 800x600. Dual display works but obviously not any of the Matrox Windows-specific goodies - otherwise tiptop. Only when I installed Matrox's own beta driver did I lose 800x600 and I'm sure it's just a misconfigured file - I can't be bothered to fix it right now 'cos it isn't a big problem. As the number of Linux users increases it makes more and more sense for hardware sellers to include Linux drivers and many now do. And as the previously often wildly different distros converge on a common Linux architecture this becomes easier for them.
My networking problems are certainly less than trying to get WfWG (Windows 3.11) up and about on a par with Windows 95 - the answers were certainly easier to find and editing simple text configuration files is a lot easier (and less dangerous) than poking around in a single monolithic and cryptic Registry. Being impatient if I can't do something I usually plunge in and do a quick hack - as I read the HOWTO's more carefully I often discover that all I actually needed to do was add an extra line to a configuration file.
Goates, there's no need to reformat your hard drive at all. Most modern distros will automatically shift Windows partitions up a bit and make their own partition using some of your free space. Linux is much leaner than the Micro$haft hog and needs far less space. The only caveat is that Linux can't (yet) read NTFS volumes directly so it may not see your Windows partition. My easy solution is to keep all my datafiles on a separate FAT32 partition - that way both OSes can see and use them.
Gotta say again, if I'd been a first time user I'd probably never have noticed many of the little things I mention and would have plunged straight into doing all the stuff most people do with their PCs quite effortlessly. Freedom from viruses, worms, hacks and M$'s authoritarian greed is a good feeling too.
The new Linuxes coming out are are a big leap from the previous generation and SuSe 9 is a peach.