I went with Mandrake 9.0 since I feel they have done the most effort to bring linux to the desktop market not to mention that I believe they have the widest range of drivers to support my hardware. Redhat 8.0 is my second choice as they to have started some in-roads to the desktop market with this version. Graphical User Interfaces are key to many users that are used to the Windows environment. These two versions seem to be at the forefront as far as linux goes. I still think I may try SuSe in the future as I am saving my pennies for a x86-64 Opteron based server sometime next year. As of this time I have not heared anything definative about Redhat and Mandrake supporting this processor but I'm sure they will eventually.
Since I only have a dial up connection it wasn't an option to download the ISO's for Mandrake so I purchased copies of the CD's from
UnixCD.com for about 15.00 dollars. They are redistributing linux in accordance with the Gnu Public License (GPL) which is great. There are other sites doing the same too. They are bringing linux to the masses at an affordable price.
My disks should arrive in 1 to 2 weeks but I'm sure they will get here sooner. I'll post back how things go. I'm looking forward to moving away from windows.
