curious about linux or unix

Linux
Try Knoppix which runs from cd and is very good at hardware detection, it is also a great tool for troubleshooting network or PC problems with. If you really want to go for an installed product then Xandros Deluxe will be so easy for you that you won't even realise you aren't using MS. Fedora Core 3 is good but installs as a LVM main disk which is a little annoying when you need to troubleshoot it. SuSE Linux is also very simple to install and use and again can be used from a 'live' cd. My preference is for SuSE which is now owned by Novell but most Servers run RedHat or a RedHat derived OS (Mandrake is also derived from RedHat) so it is useful to know RedHat.
The essential thing is to get Codeweavers Crossover Office (included in Xandros DLX) which will allow you to use Microsoft Office in Linux, you can also run some other windows software with it (DreamWeaver, Flash, Quicken, Photoshop..) which all helps you to feel at home and do something productive.

I've tried CD based OS's before and have found them to be fairly slow and unresponsive.
They are great for recovering files though!

Supastar - try the latest live distros on a modern machine, they are very good and almost as quick to load as off hard disk. Obviously the more memory in the machine the better as they work out of RAM for the most part. I am using Knoppix STD 1.0 right now and being familiar with the whole Live Distro thing comes in handy when you actually need to use it for some work related recovery or testing.

Thanks for the update Curio. I may give this a shot!

I'm also Li-curious but i'm afraid. :p

Games machines need to be Windows machines.
For most other stuff Linux is absolutely no harder to use than Windows and in many cases easier. It is best if your hardware is a little off the pace (3 or more months old) as sometimes Linux drivers take a while to come out, though most hardware manufacturers now support Linux. The Knoppix live distro will most likely pick up all your hardware and operate flawlessly straight from the boot but some software modems don't work in Linux. If you are connected via a network card and DHCP you most likely won't have any problems at all and you will be able to browse Windows shares on the network straight away. Once you have seen from a live distro that there is nothing to be scared of you might like to try any of Mandrake, SuSE, Fedora or Xandros Linux. If you want to retain a Windows feel go for Xandros but you will see from the live distros there is nothing to be perplexed about. I use SuSE a lot for general web surfing and Office work (via Crossover Office) but I have used RedHat, Fedora, Xandros and Mandrake lots of times too. Right now I am on SuSE Pro 9.1 with the Opera browser (which is also cool). If you have a SuSE 9.2 Pro live cd give it a spin - it is much lovelier than Windows. Until recently the GUI in Linux was a bit nasty but now it is better looking than Windows and coming up on MacOS, MacOSX is of course now based on a unix and a lot of linux/unix progs will compile and run in it. Most of the nasty internet stuff doesn't effect Linux at all as it relies on IE or Windows exploits.

had to switch to FireFox to upload a screenie.