Don't worry about what your brother or anybody else has to say about OS choice. People for the most part learn how to use one thing and pretty much stick with it. If somebody who uses windows all the time and doesn't have specific computing needs, linux will probably piss them off even if everything works. My girlfriend has used windows her whole life, and when she for some odd reason runs into a situation where she has to use one of my macs, it buggs her.
She gets caught up on stupid stuff like location of icons and keyboard short cuts. Oh well.
People for some odd reason seem to in general think that they have to "switch" to one thing or another.
It seems you want a new machine. Go ahead and get that shiny new, fast windows pc, and take Ubuntu for a spin on the older one. I have windows machines, linux machines, macs, and some amigas. I don't need to switch, I use them all where ever it is appropriate. Your average computer user who just reads email, surfs the web and plays video games will never understand this concept, and debating one OS or hardware platform over another is just a waste of time.
