It dawned on me that nobody, so far as I could see, addressed this stated interest.

If you are truly keen, then I think Linux is your man, so to speak. At the present time, I can't think of a more efficient way to exercise a certain degree of computing keenness than Linux (warts and all).

As others have said, Live CDs mean it can be just dating, not an expensive wedding. Partitioning and dual boot may be worth considering, but why not see if your BIOS will let you boot from an outboard USB hard drive and set up Linux on that?

I am Fedora and Redhat-focused due to employment, but Ubuntu/Kubuntu certainly win the prize today for not-so-painful general-purpose Linux. Kubuntu for me.

What are the things that bug me?;

- wireless support not so fantastic

- support for USB scanners needs to be better, SANE or no.