I'd encourage you to take a look at several distros. Ubuntu is by far the most popular, but it's not neccessarily the best. As a newcomer to Linux some other good ones to look at are SimplyMepis and Mint Linux. Mint is based on Ubuntu and SimplyMepis is based on Ubuntu's daddy, Debian. Both should be easy enough for you to pick up if you've used Ubuntu a bit. They all have their strengths and weaknesses so try them out and see which works best for you.
Also any modern distro will give you the option to set up dual booting during installation. The only recent installer I'm familiar with is Debian's (which is not a newbie friendly distro), so I can't give you specific instructions. As several have mentioned, a VM might be a good option for your non-Linux compatible programs, as might Wine (if you're patient). VMWarePlayer runs on Linux, but I've found QEmu to be a better VM platform overall. It's a little harder to set up and a little faster (provided you have all the components for it) and it likes my laptop better for some strange reason. Gimp is a good alternative to Photoshop. I use it even on Windows. I've never seen anything done with Photoshop that I couldn't do in Gimp, but then I KNOW Gimp. You'd have a bit of a learning curve. Also, be wary of the Ubuntu forums. Those forums can indeed be a great source of information which works on almost any Debian based distro, but there's also quite a bit of bad advice floating around in there. My advice, if you get a solution off the Ubuntu forums, is to use Google and man files to double check it. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Want to reach the ColdFusion community with something they want? Let them know on the House of Fusion mailing lists Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/message.cfm/messageid:316585 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/unsubscribe.cfm
