I understand that Linux is more of a hobbyist OS, and not for beginners, but it really needs a much better install. One idea that might be pretty good would be an open source program (multi-platform) that does nothing but analyze the user’s machine and recommend the best distro. But of course, the installations should be much less demanding and cryptic.
Hence the problem with Open Source......cheap, but spotty hw support. I perfer CentOS, which is open source, but an exact copy of RedHat Enterprise. Its the best free OS out there in my opinion. Of course i don’t use this for a personal machine. Excellent for webservers though.
I messed with OPENSuSE a few times, and had problems configuring various programs. I switched to Fedora 10, and no problems so far, and I’m fairly new with Linux. It’s my exclusive OS, and there is very little I can’t do with it that I could in Windows, PLUS I don’t have to worry about updating my anti-virus and anti-spyware.