Um...What is linux?

If I buy a new PC with 80 gigs hard drive and some version of
Windows like XP Home (I heard the professional was not so great,
or maybe that's been fixed) factory installed. Do I need SCSI and
RAID to arrive at a really well-done (some) Linux-installed double
boot system myself?

And, is the site below good as a tutorial, or is it as I suspect,
too general. In which case, can you suggest a better online info
source for installing (SCSI RAID yes/no?) Linux on a typical new ~ $1,000 PC

and, finally, then: 'your thoughts, Hobson(s)': Compaq? HP? Dell?
mpc? alianware? ___somename___.

http://mc1soft.com/linux/install_linux.htm

In a nutshell, linux is like windows xp in the sense that it starts when your computer starts, its your main engine, thats what you use to start everything. The upside to linux is that you can program on it, you can use it as a mail server, a web server, so on... The downside is that windows programs will not run on it. For example, if you have flash mx, it will not work on linux. Or, if you have photoshop, or smartftp, neither will work on linux. Linux has its ups and downs, but the term "downside" when coupled with "linux" is always relative. If you want to play games and chat with friends and surf the web, linux is not the way to go. But, if youre a programmer just starting your career, you want to be "100% Proud to be Microsoft Free", then linux is the way to go, along with other reasons. The only reason linux is an operating system and is not either owned by microsoft or bought out of business by microsoft is because its fully and completely free, according to the GPL. you can find different distributions, or different versions of linux, at http://www.linuxiso.org . i hope this gave you the info you were looking for.

thats...not entirely correct. http://www.codeweavers.com <-- if you buy their software, then you can use windows programs such as photoshop in linux and idk what distro you use, but when i installed Fedora Core 4 it camse stock with Gaim and Firefox so how is it NOT for surfing the web or chatting? and for gaming in linux, http://www.transgaming.com <-- there's cedega. so as you can see, linux is becoming more of a desktop than just being used for servers or programmers.

here's some screenshots from Xandros 3, the most "windows-like" distro i've seen.. http://www.xandros.com/products/home/de ... shots.html
you can't tell me that that was made for programmers and programmers alone