I'm building a new PC. The main uses will be Webbrowsing, Office-work(Word and Webpagebuilding), and gaming to some extent.

Now tell me:
Should I swicht(I know that's a stupid question)? Which distro? Which version?

Mandrake sounds nice and it's got a x86-64 version(for the AMD64 3200+ I'm planning for) http://store.mandrakesoft.com/produ..._id=173&osCsid=

I'm not much of a gamer, and most games I do play should run under Linux.

Please help me out of this confusion.

Is it hard to compile programs for Linux? THG's frightened me http://www6.tomshardware.com/howto/...tolinux-05.html

Most of the newer linux distros are much simpler to install software, try a distro like SuSE 9.1. this has got a graphica installer and system tool editor called YAST.
As for games if it plays on linux the any distro shuold run it.
As for general compling of a program, somtimes it can wind you up.
but still a better system than windows.