I’ve tried Fedora, Ubuntu, and Linux Mint. Of those, I really liked Mint best, but it wouldn’t recognize the wireless card on my laptop. Then I found PCLinuxOS and love it. Not being a geek, and hearing the horror stories, I thought the transition would be much more difficult than it was.
Another benefit, this whole experience (and I did do this initially solely as a learning exercise) has me *wanting* to learn more about computers. So I got hold of a really good (and free) booklet on using the terminal (http://people.wallawalla.edu/~larry.aamodt/engr122/TLCL-09.12.pdf). Maybe I’ll eventually turn into a geek after all....
I would say you are on the right path. Running Linux will teach you a lot about computers. Learning to program at the command line is one of the most useful skills you can have on a Linux or Unix system. Before long you will be writing your own shell scripts. I run Mac OS X and I still frequently use the terminal.