I’m a Windows Guy. I’ve wanted to see if I could walk on the Linux side for a while now. I wanted to see if I could really switch over and do all the things I need to do easily. So I decided to give it a try.

What did I want it to accomplish? Well first, it needs to be easy to install. Complicated installs will drive people away faster that price. Second, it needs to detect my hardware. Vista detected all of my hardware (XP doesn’t, but its a lot older so let’s be fair) so it’s only fair to compare.

Once installed I want to be able to do a few things like get online easy, play video and audio files, burn a DVD and connect to my corporate (Windows 2003) network through VPN. I’m pretty sure they won’t all work out of the box, but they should be easy to configure in my mind.
Since I’m Linux agnostic and have no real idea which version to use, I’ve decided to test more than one distribution out (boy I thought Vista had variety, sheesh). I know everyone under the sun uses Ubuntu, but since that’s my only real previous experience with Linux, I want to try something different. As luck would have it, I find a openSuse 11 Live CD glued to the front of Linux Format magazine (OMG this magazine is 16 dollars?? Ah, it’s from England, no wonder…) so I guess I will start there.

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