Several VMWare appliances, a couple Virtual-PC test runs, a little "live-cd" action, and I have finally decided which Linux distribution is the one for me.  I take back everything I have said the past couple days about how difficult it is to install the OS and the "packages" on them.

I have learned that the port collection is a pain in the bum to learn for all the different distributions out there but is a very effective way to install applications on the variety of Linux out there.  My beef was the ease of installing things on Windows vs Linux, but learned that my beef was only partially founded.  I learned that several different versions out there have their own varieties of ways to ease the pain, even some of them going as far as creating their own "MSI" (windows installer) counterparts.  That's cool!

So which Linux distro did I decide on?  SimplyMEPIS.  It has a graphical install tool which they took a very interesting approach with.  Instead of installing from the disk just after the boot cycle, they actually have you load up a "live-cd" version of their OS first, let you play around with it and then, if you decide you like it, hit the "INSTALL ME" icon.  Can't get much easier than that.  It runs you through a few short steps (including the ability to repartition your drive if you want -- either for dual-boot or otherwise), and then voila!  I decided to install it on a separate machine as a dedicated install, but left 60gb in a separate partition just in case I wanted to load Windows on to that machine again.  That left about 90gb for my Linux install which, according to instructions I found on the net, suggested I split into secondary partitions for the / (root), swap, and /home partitions.  I did so leaving 15gb for root, 2gb for swap, and then rest on home. 

The entire process for installing SimplyMEPIS?  20 minutes on a P4 2.4ghz w/1gb ram and a 160gb hd.  Nice.  Windows takes twice that on my AMD AthlonXP2800+ w/1gb ram, 250gb HD.

We'll see how I like it now.