Smerf have you tried mandriva? I did a lot of distro hopping including Ubuntu but Mandriva is the only one that i would recommend to windows user wanting to migrate to linux. The KDE gui is very windows-like, its hardware detection works very well, it installs rpms that aren't in the repos just by double-clicking out of the box. Lots of Linux disro's claim to "Just Work" but Only Mandriva did for me. PCLinuxOS is also nice but I don't like its "meta-distro" business because you are ALWAYS updating your system and not all updates work with one another.
