I don't know to much about your hardware. To be sure though their are people who have the same stuff and know how to set it up. One of the strengths of Linux is it's documentation. Just do a search with you hardware followed by Linux and within 20-30 min you will know what's up with that stuff and putting two OS's on one computer is common.
IHO X windows is a good replacement for the windows gui, if all you are going to use it for is apps. As far as using gui configuration interfaces go it is pretty much strictly up to your distro. I use command line almost exclusively for configuring the system.
Linux is very stable, since Unix was designed ground up as a multiuser server/mainframe environment it keeps everything the user does very isolated from the core operating system. If something screws up in your X windows or your terminal than you can 95% of the time just press ctrl+alt F2 (or F1 thru F6) to switch to a new virtual console and 'kill' the offending program. If It screws up your stuff so bad that the keyboard is not accepting input, then you can telnet in and fix it remotely.
Unix is completely network integrated, not like Windows (or what XP tries to pretend to be).
Memory leaks from programs are easily dealt with simply shutting down the program. One of the most refreshing differences between Linux and windows is that as Linux runs for weeks on end is that you don't have the gradual loss of system resources as stuff accumulates. If X windows is running slow or something is hogging resources you just shut X down and start it up. It takes about 10 seconds. No more reboots when you sit down in the evening to do something and everything is running dog slow!
Same things that crash Windows will crash Linux. What has killed me is when I am playing Quake3 and everything seizes up. It is very rare, but it happens. (I put another fan in the case and it hasn't happened since (knock on wood)).
You can go into the kernel and completely modify it. The stock Linux kernel you get distros is usually packed full of stuff you will never need like scsi support, various motherboard chipsets support, USB mouse support etc etc. The drivers for Linux are called kernel modules, and often you will load them up into memory (usually automaticly at boot time) to run you devices. However, the good thing is you can get the actual latest version of the Linux kernel source code off the internet and compile your own custom kernel. You can compile modules directly into kernel and remove unwanted things from it. This will give you a nice performance boost, however the down side if you don't configure the kernel correctly it can cause irritating problems. (compiling a new kernel its pretty easy to do: 2-3 times doing it it will be second nature, no more time consuming than installing drivers in Windows)
Unix and X window has been around before DOS, Admins everywhere were using a multiuser, gui-ed environment, 32bit , operating environment when most people were dealing with "dir /p" or figuring out how the hell to install the new joystick or get the jumpers set correctly on the new soundblaster. (either that or playing with the Oscar the grouch in the trash bin). This lends directly to the stability of Unix in general; It's been around longer all most of the major bugs have been worked out a long time ago. Modern desktop programs are not much more stable than ones you get in Windows. Mozilla; although it can handle tabs (a very big plus), it screws up every once and a while just like Explorer does, ex the Java support still fills up the memory when you play online Java games to long (I think I have much fewer problems than my roommate with his windows2k's explorer...) . The big difference is that you can recover all your resources in 30 sec with no reboot or no clt+alt+del and searching thru vague menus for the bad proggy that won't turn off.
Anything in Linux you can fix, If something goes wrong you can repair It or replace any part of the OS. you can copy directory to directory from one hardrive to a replacement hardrive, and everything will work fine. You can build up your Linux version from scratch taking peaces hodge podge from one distro or the next, or getting it all yourself from source code and you can make it work. (Like everything of course this depends on your skill level).
Unix command line is merciless if you are running it from root (sys administrator account, or superuser). One bad 'rm' (deleter command) can remove your entire system.... ie: 'rm -rf /'
Of course if you be sure to do everything a regular user, it is pretty much impossible to screw things up too bad this way (even if you tried).
Some more big pluses for Linux is:
Programming Support: Linux is a programmer/hacker wet dream compared to Windows for programming. Perl scripting, C, C++, Java ( and a variety of other languages), Programming editors, hex editors, compilers etc etc are a integral part of any Linux distro and almost required part of the OS, with very well documented standards. In Linux everything is written in C, and 99 percent of all source code is available and is completely legal to modify or distribute any part of it (with some wise restrictions of course). The Freedom you get from this can be addictive.
Internet support. You can run professional level servers on you home PC. TCP/IP is almost Unix born. It was integrated in every version since the late 70's. Apache is the #1 web server in the internet (at 60-odd percent) and it comes with every major distribution. FTP, SSH, Telnet, NFS, Samba, file and print servers are available standard among others. You can set up a box to be a ethernet(/dsl/cablemodem/'csu/dsu'/fiberoptic/tolken ring/T1/fddi) router/firewall (i use one for my cable modem to protect my household LAN) and it's pretty much second nature to Linux.
Viruses are hackers are not a major problem that it is in Windows. It's up to the user, though, to harden the system against attacks. Most step you can take in securing you OS is simple and effective. Security is #1 priority in system design, every bit of source code is reviewed and reviewed and reviewed by every hacker, system administrator, (even FBI has contributed code) for bugs, backdoors, any bad design. (they want know it works before they put their professional reputations) Nobody's perfect and there are bugs in every bit of software ever made, But fix's are usually made by the discoverer off the bug and patches come within weeks of exposed weakness. Linux can't hide behind secrecy and law-enforced ignorance for it's security like Microsoft can.
AND
If you used command line in DOS, you will love it in Linux. The BASH shell is very mature and has features that make you wonder how the hell you ever could stand to use DOS, like press TAB for command completion.
(I am just beginning to learn about this script stuff ---->) A very big thing in Unix/Linux are 'tools'. These are very well written small programs that do very specific tasks. Like 'ls' (like dir), 'grep' (filters output thru a word sequence),'date' (show date/time), more (pauses info a screen full at a time for easy viewing), less (opposite of more), cat (prints out file content to a screen). Using pipes '|' and redirects '>, >>, 2>, <, <<' you can string together tools to create useful programs, and you can put these in files and execute them (like batch files but 10x better).
here are a couple or examples:
ls -lR / 2> /dev/null | grep quake > search.txt
(this will search thru your entire directory system and puts a list any entries in files or directory containing 'quake' in there name in a text file 'search.txt')
date >> /root/userlog; who >> /root/userlog; ps -aux >> /root/userlog; cat userlog | less
(if you were to put this in a file named 'bob' and make the file executionable and put it the /usr/sbin folder... Every time you were a superuser (root) and typed out bob and pressed enter it would take a snapshot of your system: it would pout the date and time of you the ran the program, all the users that were all logged on the computer, and the programs that were running(sorted by user) and append this info at the end of a file in your root's home directory named 'userlog' and then print out the entire file to the screen in a format in which you could see it a screen full at a time or be able to scroll up and down line by line. This way you could make a simple log of user activity if you think someone is up to no good or you suspect someone of hogging all the resources...) 🙂
As far a Windows vs Linux is concerned,
Windows is a good OS for businesses that don't want to deal with a lot of training or specialized techs. The only problems you will face is having to deal with a very dangerous internet. You will have to depend on third-party vendors for firewalls, and services that are not offered by Microsoft. You will have to depend on Bill gates for all your updates and deal with very unfriendly and restrictive copyright stuff. This all adds up to money spent. Sometimes it worth it have support contracted from other businesses but often the money you saved by not hiring skilled workers and admins can be lost if a hacker or unethical competitor damages you system or steals information. This threat, of course, is not eliminated by using Unix, sometimes it can be worse. It's all up to the caliber of the people that you have working for you. If your hackers are better at protecting your interests, than malicious ones are at attacking you than you can rest easy at night (windows can benefit from good admins, too, just in a lesser extent) . Unix's proven track record of having less administration overhead, it's versatility, and excellent scalability make it a very attractive solution.
In the home user market Linux offers a interesting way of interacting with a computer. It does very well at the standard uses that a normal person might use it for. It can word process as well as any other OS. It has good web browsers (which are a bit more advanced then Explorer), e-mail clients. A multitude of simple games. Very nice image manipulation and viewing programs. You can pick up a installation cd for under 20 dollars online, or you can download it free. My first Linux distro was Redhat 7.0. I got the 3 cd set with a 500+ page user manual ("Linux User Bible "or some such) for 46 dollars. This is a lot better than ninety-six dollars for a XP upgrade. The next frontier in the end-user market for Linux is in games (for which it is sorely lacking). One promising program is WineX. Transgaming technologies advertise that their product can provide support for Window's API in Linux. They have versions of the latest games such as Grand Theft Auto III (ya baby), Sims, Warcraft III, Kohan, and Unreal. Instead of buying WineX outright, you pay a subscription to there services. It's 5 bucks a month and you can download the latest versions of WineX, game installers, and do things like voting on what games or features Transgamer should concentrate on next, (I haven't tried this yet because I am to damn poor to go the store and buy games to try out.... *sob*)
hope that helps ya.
Wow that was a lot of typing I was on a roll (my brain bursts open unto the keyboard)... You guys can use this info for anything you want.....
