Sigh.... I'll have to go back and read this thread more closely to see what people are running these days.
A couple years ago I was tinkering with Puppy and PCLOS (which was brand new back then) in an attempt to get a FREE, easy to use OS for a computer I built for my father. After a lot of hair pulling and wasted hours I had to blow it all away and install Win XP when I finally realized one day I was starting to read things about the deep inner workings of how Linux talks to hardware, which was totally the opposite of the experience I wanted!
The deal breaker was that neither OS would emit a peep of sound no matter what I did (other than installing XP).
I want to give Linux another shot, but my past experience has left me gun-shy. I have a spare SFF PC lying around that I'd like to use, but no OS for it....