Well done on an excellent topic Tony, lets hope this one equals and betters it
Ive got the Mandrake 9.1 ISOs on my system at the moment, but being 666MB, 665MB & 665MB probably the diggest disadvantage is that they take a long time to download, and you need 700MB CDs to burn them onto, also, like me, if you dont have the CDs yet they take 1.90GB of your hard drive space...
However, bearing in mind the latest severe security craters (i still insist they are too huge to be holes) in WinXP Linux security has to be some of the best available.
Mandrake Linux 9.1 Power Pack on 7 CD?s for £6.95, sounds like a great offer, i found a set of CDs for £7, but there were only 3... Im guessing yes, you get a tonne of software with it...
I believe October 15th was the release date for 9.2 for Mandrake Club members...
The only difference between Linux Distro's that i can see are that each one has its own little touch added to it. RedHat and Mandrake are very GUI based, whereas Debian is not so much GUI but Command Line (Command Prompt, Shell)
RedHat and Mandrake are the popular distro's at this time, they are the easiest to install, and their GUIs make it easier for Windows geered people to get used to them. They still run on Command Line though, so as the user gains experience they can advance their knowledge.
I think most people that have used Win95, Win98 and WinXP will stay with them, only people that are interested, worried about security, or just want an alternative will look into Linux. In that way i think your computing experience influences what you do.
However, for most people Dual Booting is still the prefered root, rather than totally abandoning the OS they have used forever. This way they can run their beloved Windows while still getting used to Linux...
As you can see ive looked into this, i would like to see what others opinions are.