I'm currently playing around with Fedora (text based version).

I tried many OSes in the past, I ran OS/2, Windows and Red Hat Linux (for a little while). To be honest, I liked OS/2 the most, but that's a dead end now, so I stick with the windows branch. Take a look at ReactOS, it's an OS in progress, but it's very promising and they're doing a great job! When it's finished it'll be a lightweight windows lik OS that's 100% compatible with Vista (without the restrictive things and the huge resource demand)..

Yes, kernelwise. Vista is rap, I agree. But that's far more than the kernel. ReactOS tries to achieve compatibility with the vista kernel (so you can run vista-designed programs, including DirectX 10) but without all the junk, errors and annoyances

It sure is!

Yes, it has quite some milage to go, but the kernel's coming together nicely..

I use Ubuntu at home and Xubuntu at work (older, crappier PC ), in addition to Windows XP for games. 

I'ves used Mandrake and Fedora in the past though.  I prefer Gnome over KDE and Ubuntu works fine for me.  Any issues I've had I've been able to fix relatively easily (except for the usual ATI driver issues, but that's now a thing of the past).

"I prefer Gnome over KDE"
why is that?  I use gnome simply because I had to pick one of those during install.  It works perfectly clear and is very intuitive.  Much dif with kde?

edit: depiratised.

"sounds great. Do you have linky to download?"

Don't bother just yet, it's only worth trying in a virtual machine atm It's still alpha stage

Use this guide:
http://www.pendrivelinux.com/2008/05/08/usb-ubuntu-804-persistent-install-via-the-live-cd/

And ye I got experience with it, one tip: Dont let your USB pin become full (for instance with to many updates and shit)

Np

I tried it and liked it until I got the brilliant idea to try KDE or Gnome alongside the other one.. that took to much space and couldnt use the pen after that since it was full

My advice:(I recently started to discover linux)
If you start from zero simply go to another version of windows till you get used to linux. Put it on a stick like me or on another disk/partition as a dual boot. I found out its very easy to start, but it takes a while till you found all the functions you got used to in windows. When you need your computer urgently you might not have the time.

@SJ:
It took me like 10' and it was installed and ready to use. Next thing on the list is finding drivers for my NW-card and a decent firewall. I'm only into it a few weeks and already starting to feel like a master/addict

I concur.  Firewalls are not especially useful and antivirus software is less than useless.  Almost all viruses are written to work in Windows and hence will not work in Linux.  So really, don't bother. 

@ Insignificant

What hardware have you got?  Specifically, what graphics card are you using?  Bearing in mind we're talking about linux, please don't say ATI.  

I also concur with SpeedJerry on this too... get a live CD - you can easily download the .iso from the wonder web and burn to disc (can use a free software package like ImgBurn.  When you restart your computer ensure that the disc is in the drive and that your BIOS tries to boot from disc drive before your hard drive.  Then see the awesomeness of linux in action.  If you like what you see, you can use the inbuilt partition tools in the live CD to partition your hard drive so you can install a copy of linux and dual boot your system. 

As for what version of linux, I personally use Ubuntu (you can get versions of Ubuntu that use the Gnome, KDE and XFCE desktop environments), but I have used Mandrake (now Mandriva; uses only KDE) in the past which I liked.  Fedora is also pretty good.