After some half-serious tryouts of linux I finally decided to switch for good. Windows crapped out on me one time too many, and I'm not talking about some small program crash, but total annihilation. Anyways, i've always had some Linux CD's lying around the house for testing purposes, some experience too, but unfortunately those installations were always short-lived and unusable due to missing features (dual monitor support and sound being the usual suspects. Hello, my name is cjdmax and I'm a Linux convert.
This post has been subsequently updated with more news since the switch

Here are the distro's I've tested and dismissed;

• Mandriva: Installs and works out of the box reasonably well. Dual monitor support was a few clicks away (and that makes it truly unique in distro-land) and sound was a few minutes work. Unfortunately, Mandriva (10-something) was just too buggy and unable to withstand my kludgy and, in retrospect, very fat-fingered attempts at tweaking.
• SuSE (10-something): Never made it to dual monitor support, and mp3 codecs were intentionally disabled due to licensing issues. That was a showstopper; i've gotta be able to listen to music while doing extremely taxing stuff like customizing linux installs
• Damn Small Linux: Nice, but not really usable as a windows replacement. It's a killer distro to run in VMware though!
• Slackware: too damn hardcore :P
• Debian: if you're not building a server, why bother

Eventually I just chose Kubuntu, the staple distro for windows converts, and all the rage in Slashdot-land.

Installation was... troublesome, mainly due to the fact that I only had an old Dapper disc laying around. The next 48 hours were spent reading books while apt-get reeled in packages. 12 hours could have been saved had I been aware that you can't just jump from Dapper to Edgy... Another 12 could have been saved by me not doing a server-install by accident. Anyways, it was time well spent reading some science fiction.

Dual monitor support is a must for me. Ever since I've had the opportunity to expand my screen resolution (back in Windows for Workgroups...) I've always striven to push my monitor to the limit of its capacities. The next step was of course to upgrade to two monitors. As soon as I have the money I also hope to add a beamer to that :) Life without two monitors handicaps me in my multi-windowed ways. Getting it to work on kubuntu was not possible without first installing the ati drivers for linux. After reading a few step-by-step guides for installing the drivers ati distributes from it's website, I decided to just use the version that Ubuntu packages and reel it in with apt-get. Using the ati-config tool that came with the driver, I was up and running two screens. Sadly, every time I used KDE's utility to manipulate screen settings, I was stuck with a virtual resolution, meaning I could actually scroll around both desktops. After I figured out that I was supposed to set both monitors to plug and play in KDE that problem disappeared. The next problem was getting hardware acceleration but I have yet to get that working. Apparently the Ati X800 is hard to get to work. Perhaps the next Kubuntu (and Xorg) release will fix that. As a result (I think) video playback is choppy when fullscreen.
Update:3d accel wasn't all that hard in retrospect. After reading a few guides on the subject I was able to download Ati's closed source driver and get it to work by compiling my own fglrx module. This has the downside of having to recompile after every kernel update. To compound the problem, after I switched to Feisty beta I was forced to use patchfiles to modify Ati's driver to work on 2.6.20 kernels. Oh well... many thanks to the community surrounding Ubuntu for the loads of documentation!

Sound was easier. After much wailing and gnashing of teeth I discovered that the digital output was switched on. That automatically kills sound from the normal minijacks on the soundcard. Sadly, the digital out is labeled "IEC598" in Kmix. Not too user friendly.

Application support is pretty good for a linux distro. Apt-get is pretty darn good at reeling in packages and setting them up. Unfortunately applications crash more often than windows applications and render less descriptive error messages. This may be due to bad config or badly written plugins for programs, but it's inexcusable nonetheless. Here's a list of programs that are especially troublesome.

• VMWare Server Console. After installing from the tar.gz distributed from their website, and following the instructions, I have yet to see it in action. It don't start.
• Firefox seems to be more susceptable to crashing add-ons than the windows version. Tab Mix plus and some CSS properties viewer crash without comment or error
• Yakuake and Tilda (both FPS-style dropdown terminals) don't do anything. At All.
• Adept tends to crash for no reason at all.
• Supercaramba doesn't load them widgets

No showstoppers, but pretty ugly anyway. Some apps are absolutely killer though. Kioslaves is a godsend for the web developer, Ktorrent outshines even utorrent, and Amarok owns Itunes (in my opinion still the best for the windows platform). If I can get a few Windows programs running (namely: Photoshop, Fireworks, maybe a few games) I wonder if I'll keep Windows around...
Update:It turns out I did have to keep windows around, for the games mostly. A clean windows with only the most necessary apps installed isn't all that bad actually. Using two OSes does hamper productivity though. Downloading, mail/IM clients and such don't play so nice together.

Anyway, going Linux has been good fun so far, aside from the sizable time invested. If you're into web development, don't care much for your games and aren't afraid of some arcane configuration, now's the time to switch. Before Vista's shoved down your throat.
Update: And keep XP lying around!