Greetings,
I have been messing with Linux off and on for the past 2-3 years. I am past the "newbie" stage, so I can handle some of the more difficult tasks in Linux. I have been a complete Windows User for quite some time now, and have been trying to put myself completely over to Linux. Every time that I have tried have gotten so close, but yet so far. I am having serious trouble deciding on which Distro to go with. I like the stability of RedHat 9.0, but I cant stand all the extra junk that is installed. I like all the bells and whistles of Mandrake 9.2, but it can get unstable rather quickly. Is there another distro that I might need to try that would combine the stability and usability of these two distros?

Also, I would like to have some customizable features that these two have as well. One of the other main things that keeps me from totally switching over is some of the software that I use in Windows XP. Here's my current list:
Office XP
Photoshop 7.0
Frontpage 2003
Winamp
Interwin DVD
AOL IM

I know that some of these programs can be used with Wine. However I have been unsuccessfull at getting any of these to work with Wine. If I use Codeweavers' Crossover Office I can get all of the programs to install just fine. I am willing to bet that part of it is that I have Windows XP on an NTFS partition. I've also heard a lot about Gentoo Linux as well.

Thanks for all the help
Steve

OpenOffice
Gimp
Emacs :} (seriously, Frontpage is an abomination,
violating HTML standards by the truckload ... )
xmms
Ogle (MPlayer, Xine)
Gaim


Cheers,
Tink

Quanta Plus is the Linux html-editor with the most bells-and-whistles right now. Bluefish is the Gnome equivalent. Mozilla and OpenOffice both also have html editors.

For AIM there are at least a dozen different linux clients, including an official one from AOL. I'd agree that GAIM is probably the one you'll want to use though.

As far as which distro to use, I'd say Slackware. It's not as hard to install as it looks, it comes with almost everything you'd want (the rest being easy to add) and is as stable as you can get.

Gentoo is a fine distro and has several advantages over Slackware if you don't mind the compile times. Most of those advantages are not ones I would have any need for, which is why I don't use it.

If you want something easier to install I'd look at Knoppix or something Knoppix-based like Morphix or Mepis, which are even easier.

And if you don't mind using something which isn't quite finished, there's Ark Linux. It's as user friendly as you can get, and is loosely based on RH so it'll be somewhat like what you are used to.

Not sure about this one, but how about Libranet? I only read good things about it, and I am planning on installing it one of these days. If only I had a little more time to get into it.