I've been interested in moving to Linux for quite some time but have had problems along the way. I'm looking for a decently easy distro to use because of my newbie status, and one that will work on my current hardware:

Asus A8V Deluxe (socket 939)
AMD 64-bit 3500+
Two 160 gig SATA HD's in RAID 1
ATI X800 256mb AGP8x graphics card

Also prefer if it will support WoW and CS either though Cedega or Wine.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Search these forums for similar threads, there are hundreds. There are also a few threads with links to questionnaires that will point you to your 'perfect distro'.

All distros pretty much support the same hardware, same kernel you see. So examine a few hardware lists, HCL here for example for hardware that is known to be supported by Linux

Actually my main concerns were the SATA hard drives and raid controller. In the admittedly little research I did I found that my initial first pick (linspire) does not support SATA.

I've been looking at Ubuntu/Kubuntu
is there much of a difference between GNOME and KDE or would somone who has never really used linux (such as myself) not really notice a difference?

I agree with phild.g. on searching on the different threads.
As far as what works well for a beginner, it depends on what kind of beginner you are.
If you are familiar with how Windows functions and are trying to break from the "Empire of Bill", Linspire is an easy transition. SuSE, Fedora, Mepis and pretty much any of the bigger distros are fairly easy to use and are going to depend on what you are trying to accomplish.

I spent about 2 months playing with different distros till I finally settled on SuSE. I also have Linspire installed on my son's computer to ease his transition to Linux. My only concern with Linspire is that because of the way it is set up, you may not learn how to manipulate your system via command line or other methods. For that reason I prefer my SuSE or even Fedora just because it begs the question of learning to use your system somewhat. They are still user friendly, but don't lure you into a false sense of laziness.

Enjoy

There is a difference and it just comes down to preference. Alot of diehards prefer Gnome but there just as many who prefer KDE.

As far as the SATA HD's ... the distros with the newer kernels tend to support them more than the older kernels do. I believe that Debian Sarge (their latest one) supports SATA.

My system for deciding which flavour of Linux suits me is simple...

Does it play my CDs without messing around with stuff.

Linspire does.

No-one else does.

Ubuntu would be an excellent choice, especially with version 5.10 ("Breezy Badger") due out on October 13th.

As for Ubuntu/KDE, they're both good desktops, but I strongly prefer Gnome. As far as the ease of transition for a Windows user, I'd say they're probably about the same. I haven't used Kubuntu myself, however, from what I've heard, KDE isn't as well integrated as Gnome is in Ubuntu. Give Gnome a try. You'll like it!

Have fun!

i'd say suse considering how great some of its tools are like YaST, YOU and SaX2 nothing is easier .

I'd love to use Suse. In most respects it's a great distro. However, it's the CD playing thing.

Why can't most Linux distros get CD's to play without mucking about, and then not particularly well when you do get some sort of sound.

By the way, took someone's (cheers, mate!) advice on how to get a free version of "Linspire 5.0". Gone off it a tad. Although it plays CD's beautifully "straight from the box", it won't allow me to set up for UK keyboard. Having to hit the key for " to get @ is a real pain.

I'm going to persevere with Suse.

Also, how the hell do you change the defaults for Lilo in Linspire!

Oh, and if anyone can tell me how to get CD's playing well in Suse, I'd love them forever (but at a distance). I think my sound card is a VIA AC '97.

Are you talking about regular audio CDs? Because when I pop one into Ubuntu (even Ubuntu live), it immediately appears on my desktop and just starts playing.

If you're talking about an MP3 CD, it's because MP3s are a proprietary format that most Linux distros don't come with support for out of the box for ideological or cost reasons.

try a bunch - they're all free! then pick one that suits your needs and go with it.