C
Geek!
-bash-2.05b$Luser!
C
Nerd!
-bash-2.05b$Fanboi!
I love OS wars.
IIRC, this thread started off by asking what sort of Lunix to use. It follows that we are not going to need to discuss Windows except in by way of comparison.
Longarm - whichever distro you take (Mepis is the best of the lot, Kubuntu a close second), painstakingly document all your userid/password combinations (e.g. for Pprune), backup, backup, backup, and migrate your emails, contacts and anything else you might need to somewhere you can get them from Linux, be it a FAT32 partition, DVD, etcetera.
Find out how to shrink your (presumably) Windows partition, (an excellent tutorial is here:
http://phoenix.calpoly.edu/~kvoelker.../dual-boot.cgi ), create a couple more for Linux, download, and install. Before the grin goes off your face, log in to everywhere you need to (using the userid/password combos mentioned earlier). Allow a week to get over the urges to boot into Windows and a lifetime to learn the intricacies of this splendid OS.
Oh, and backup.
You are then be set up to join the geeks, squeezing zits and doing sudoku on the Tube.
BOFH
//IEFBR14