I'm currently running windows xp and thinking of making the switch to linux. I'm not sure what distro I would use but looking around I think I would move to Unbuntu. I'm wondering if I'm going to be able to take some essential stuff I have like mp3's and open office files with me from XP to linux? How much trouble will I have finding printers and mp3 players to work with linux?

IMHO, if you've never been on Linux before, Fedora is a nice distrib for one simple reason, it's the huge amount of rpm packages available. This spares you compiling source code which even though is the best thing to do, can be quite time-consuming for a newbie. So if you want to be able to install a whole lot of programs, go for the distro that has the most binary packages...Fedora. Using OO in Linux is as straightforward as in Windows. If you want to access Windows type files on a FAT32 disk or NTFS disk, I would advise to put Linux on a separate hard disk.

i think you should use suse 9.3 professional.

some reasons:
- very easy to install and to configure with Yast. It is like control panel in windows
ATI or NVIDIA Driver work fine on suse 9.3
- you can play mp3s, real audio out of the box
- you will get a printed admin and user book.
- you will get 1 year installation support from novell
- OpenOffice 2.0Beta is included --> will be updated as soon as possible to final over YOU (Yast Online Update)
- Most things work out of the box. ie. my Canon IXUS 430. Plugged in and it works just fine.

So maybe this will help you to find the right distribution.

I think SUSE is the best distri for beginners and maybe for experts. You can do anything in the GUI but you can do it in the console, too.

I'm using suse since 9.2 and i am very happy with my suse installation.

I had the same requirements as you and more and fedora core met them all, i'm not claiming it's the most suited to you, but i like it. You can give it and others a try whilst retaining your XP partition.

OO can be installed off install CD aswell as quite a few Media players (audio/video)

Let's call this thread to a halt right here! These type of questions have been asked quite a lot in the past and it might be more usefull to just use the search function, otherwise this will once again become a huge thread with arguments that everyone has come up with dozens of times.

no offence,
elluva

You are just looking for basic computer functions, playing audio and printing. Any distro will allow you to do those things. Some, like Fedora, don't come with built in mp3 support, but the fix for that is posted about 10,000 places online. You only need to download an rpm, and it will then work. You should check out http://www.linuxquestions.org/hcl/index.php and see if your printer has linux support. Chances are pretty good that it does. Distro wise, you'll get as many different opinions as there are distros. There really isn't much difference between them. If you like typing and knowing what you are doing, then Slackware/Gentoo are great. I see Debian as middle ground, and Suse/Fedora/Ubuntu as the "easy" graphical guys. Although you can run any of those without a GUI and do everything at a terminal. You can also put tools on Slackware or Gentoo to make them "easier" to install packages. Hey, they're free, try a few and see what you like or dislike!

Peace,
JimBass

For actual media players, I find xmms to be nice and simple, and use xine for video. YMMV