That's the main problem with Linux - it will drop you in the deep end. I think the main problem is there are too many distros. They can't release universal driver packages for example, so you have to download the one compiled on the distro's server. That's fine for thing like graphics card, where the code rarely changes, but as I'm finding with the sound cards, sometimes it can be a complete pain. Because there are so many sound chips even within the same range of cards, they don't even have standard distro packages, and the thought of recompiling the kernel frightens me somewhat. This is a bit of a pain given this is eventually going to be a media system...

Windows is a lot better than people given it credit for. XP is stable, easy to use and secure, all without a lot of fiddling. Almost everything installs via a single file, double-click and go, with a nice wizard interface. And it is quite cheap - £60 for the OEM Home version, which is supported and updated for a number of years. Apple release new versions of OSX every couple of years, and each costs £100 for the same features as XP updated via Windows update.