Hello all...I realize the question is simply begging for seriously opinionated answers so I will explain a little.
I have worked with PC's for quite a while and know quite a bit about windows stuff (part of the problem), and am beginning to become highly distraught about the general trend of the PC (windows side) industry's startling practice of misinformation to users in general. How to become less distraught? Change!!!
I have in the past tried to get into some different flavors of linux and was never able to employ patience in the learning curve. Those days are over.
I have a PF4 extreme Motherboard with a 3.2 Ghz P4 processor. The board supports Hyper Threading, so I would like to utilize SMP. Also unfortunately I do need to continue with the use of MS stuff for now, so I also need to be able to dual and even triple boot the system. I currently run XP, Fedora Core2, and have a Debian install which I have never been able to get functional.
Another big issue is the utilization of SATA drives as well as IDE. I have run the Fedora system for a limited time and seemed to be seeing signs of data corruption. Thus I feel the need to completely reinstall every OS including the XP, in my effort to trouble shoot the grief.
So to the point, I know to install windows first, and would like to install two other flavors of linux, and wish to inquire about :stability, ease of installation (hopeful that the OS will recognize hardware and install drivers correctly with a minimum of user intervention), and functionality (need to learn Server functionality, i.e. Apache, Samba, Inetd, X), and would also like to use this machines power without my head exploding!!!
Is this realistic, or am I hunting the holy grail!

Here comes another one . There are a zillion threads on this topic, just do a search. Slackware and Suse/Fedora id what I would install.

slackware!

Quote:

ease of installation (hopeful that the OS will recognize hardware and install drivers correctly with a minimum of user intervention)

mandrake, suse!

Quote:

functionality (need to learn Server functionality, i.e. Apache, Samba, Inetd, X)

slackware!

=)

My stock answer:

The one that you have at hand.....
....or.....
the first one to install cleanly on your system.

Linux is a kernel, freely available to all.
GNU tools (and others) build on top to make an OS.
After a few months of using whatever distribution you settle on, it can be whatever you want it to (regardless of how it got started). My Gentoo machine is nearly the same as the Mandrake one and the Debian one (and the FreeBSD box I gave to my friend).

Pick one and play. Come here when you're stuck.