I've been thinking of having both Kubuntu and Win xp installed on my machine because I'm tired of all the security flaws in Win xp even though I have all the security I need. I've read a lot about Ubuntu (Gnome) and Kubuntu (KDE), they seem very user friendly. There is still the problem of compatibility like the mouse not being detected, usb thumb drive, webcam... It does look very nice though. The major down side is I can't use all the software I currently use on Windows (photoshop, dreamweaver, games...). I thought about it and I'll stay with Win XP for now and get the best anti-virus kaspersky. It seems like it detects everything (more than any other anti-virus) but the only issues seems to be with the installation. Some are not able to install it. I was using Redhat and Mandrake in school some ~5 years ago but we mostly used the console for configuring the system.All this to say that you should try dual boot first (win xp and ubuntu on same machine) so if you need your win software you just reboot.