How did I forget you were a computer geek? ::embarassed::

Tracy and I are looking to migrate from windows NT to linux on the home box, before Vista becomes the ubiquitous--but our combined knowledge about linux is only slightly more than diddly plus squat. Would you have any advice for would-be microsoft refugees?
We do already use firefox and openoffice, I use gimp at work, I'm looking at opensource replacement for windows media player for handling music (rec me?). I have a glancing familiarity with a few bash commands; servers at work are almost all running linux.

For music on Linux, I use XMMS, which is a pretty close clone of WinAmp. For video, I tend to use VLC (which also has a Windows version), or occasionally Totem.

As to my advice on Linux, I'd definitely recommend Debian, or a distribution derived from it (such as Ubuntu or Kubuntu), with the KDE desktop environment. Debian is what I use, personally, though I've heard good things about Kubuntu.

Debian or its descendants because its package management system is phenomenal: if you want to install a package, it will automatically install everything else that package depends on, if it's not already installed. And upgrading all of your installed software to the latest versions is as easy as logging in as root and typing "apt-get update;apt-get upgrade". (If you install KDE, there's also a visual utility, KPackage, which makes finding and installing packages very easy.

KDE for a few reasons: you can set it up to behave like Windows, to ease your transition. It comes with a lot of additional programs. If you install WINE so that you can run many Windows programs on Linux, applications which minimize themselves to the system tray will actually show up in KDE's equivalent of the system tray.

One really excellent resource is the Easiest Linux Guide Ever (PDF). It's basically "Linux for Windows Users"; it's written for a different distribution of Linux (SUSE), which installs somewhat differently than Debian, but after the installation instructions, it goes into how to use Linux - and specifically how to use KDE.

If you'd like to try out Linux before you install it for real, you can download and burn a "live CD" - just tell your computer to boot to the CD, and it will set up a complete Linux environment without altering anything on your hard drive. (It will run a little slowly, since loading programs off CD is much slower than loading them off a hard drive.)

Knoppix, which is derived from Debian, is the live CD that really got me hooked on Linux after a few unsuccessful prior attempts. There's also a Kubuntu live CD out, which I may just try myself now. Download the .ISO file, then burn it using Nero's "Burn Image to Disc" backup option, or the equivalent in whatever CD-burning package you use.

Oh yeah - as things stand now, install the 32-bit version of Linux, even if you've got a 64-bit CPU. Unfortunately, there are some third-party closed-source applications, like Flash, that aren't available for 64-bit Linux yet. Which, if you do a lot of Web browsing, especially viewing videos online, can be quite frustrating.

Thanks, that's great help. Now that you mention it, I have heard something positive about ubuntu before. also winamp. so will have to try XMMS when/if we go the linux route.

Apparently that Kubuntu live CD doesn't have a full suite of applications like Knoppix does (Knoppix fills a standard CD, whereas the Kubuntu live CD is only about 150 MB). And it doesn't boot for me, so there may be a problem with it.

Definitely check out Knoppix, though; like Ubuntu and KUbuntu, it's descended from Debian, and it does use KDE, so you'll at least get a similar experience to what you'll get with them.