Well, I think you know my opinions on the Windows platform by now [Linked Image] I have to keep up-to-date with it because some of our customers want support for it, but for preference give me a nice unix/Linux/MasOS system any day.

A modern Linux distribution is a lot easier to use than the ones of a few years ago were. We've had a lot of success with SuSE but there is no special reason to choose that one above any of the others.

Provided you can see clear migration paths for all you applications (eg. MS Word/Excel -> OpenOffice, Quickbooks -> gnucash, etc) I'd say you shoud go for it.

If you stick an extra hard disk in the computer, you can put linux on that and have a dual-boot system, so that XP can be kept for a emergencies while you do your migration at your own pace. Might be less stressful than an all-eggs-in-one-basket approach.