What OS of Linux should I use?

[Alaedhros]

It wasn't my intent, honestly. It was mainly as a response to the OP.

Okay, cool.

I hope that clarifies my position and apologies.

No need to apologise!

I actually have 8GB of RAM (4x 2GB)...

All right, time to 'fess up: are you trying to take over the world or something?

Is there any one that's the most "Windows-like".

There are a number of desktop environments to choose from, but the most popular right now are GNOME and KDE. I'd say that KDE is more "Windows-like", but I prefer GNOME because it seems a lot less cluttered to me. Neither are very hard to get used to.

GNOME screenshots

KDE screenshots

If you do go with KDE, be sure to use a distro that has either 3.5 or 4.1. KDE recently overhauled a lot of stuff, which resulted in significant innovation and was a pretty good thing, IMHO, but the 4.0 release was a little rocky (and not really intended for public consumption). Distros are in the middle of migrating from 3.x to 4.x, but just know that you should go with the older, very stable and very good 3.5 codebase, or the 4.1 codebase, but not the 4.0 release.

 

[Carpe Occasio]

Mepis is pretty good.

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

All right, time to 'fess up: are you trying to take over the world or something?

Mayyyybe

But in reality, I was going for the maximum I could get in there (4 DDR2 DIMM slots).
I've used Photoshop at work, installed on a MUD terminal, and while it's an actual computer, it only has 1/2GB of RAM. There were times just moving a photo within a project took 5 minutes to re-render. I planed (at the time I built my current system) to get PS, and I did, so there's no way I was going to deal with that kind of crap. Plus I've had similar problems on other computers with low RAM in the past.
No problems of that kind so far with this system, but still getting all the memory recognized is gonna be a good thing.
Overall it's a fairly "overdone" machine with a lot of redundancies.

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

Another question, before I do my reinstall of XP and software this weekend:
When I eventually install Linux (whatever version), will it recognize all the software that was previously installed under XP? Or will I have to (re)install all that stuff after Linux for it to recognize/utilize any of it? Different registry?

 

[Michael Chris]

No, it definitely won't recognize any software from XP. There is no registry in Linux. The Linux installation will be completely separate from your XP install, also the software would be completely incompatible. You can ocassionally use WINE to run Windows software, but you'll have to install the software on the Linux install. You can set up a partition on your hard disk for data files (no programs files) and have it be shared by both XP and linux.

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

Not the MS software per se, but any of the software I install under XP, like Photoshop, Corel apps, Norton, like that.
So everything would need to be installed twice?

 

[Michael Chris]

Yes, the installations would be completely separate.

 

[Warp Core Breach]

Not the MS software per se, but any of the software I install under XP, like Photoshop, Corel apps, Norton, like that.
So everything would need to be installed twice?

Photoshop will run under Wine. Not sure about the Corel stuff, and there's definitely no need to install anything Norton at all.

 

[Alaedhros]

And even if stuff will run under WINE, I find it easier to just switch to Linux-native versions. Then you have seamless package management.