I like RED HAT the best myself - Mandrake is to slow for me .. Also if you want to run windows appz on Linux, why not use VMWare and install a Windows os that way, you would have both os's on one system - When you want to run a windows prog, just turn it on and go
.. I also found some progs for windows that also have linux counter parts.
Right now though I am seriously thinking about switching to mac, I want to learn OSX 10.2 Jaguar .. It's linux based.