You're right, there are a lot of distros out there. If you ask me though, Linux is Linux, since you can set up any distro to be like anything you want. The trick is to find one that's made by people with a similar vision for what Linux should be like. In that case it takes little or no effort to get it exactly how you prefer it. For me, a former NT admin, I feel very much at home in Mandrake and Suse. However, the more I use Linux the more I appreciate the differences between Windows and Linux/Unix/BSD. ...even the *gasp!* command line.

I am personally convinced that in many ways, Linux is the superior of Windows. But, in the end, it's just an OS. It's just an appliance which performs a set of functions, nothing more. :p