I run my box with Mandrake 8.2 and Win98 (Gotta test Samba servers somehow) and I had a great XPerience when XP came out.
1: Insert disk
2: Boot machine (A-Bit KT-7, 768MB RAM 1200 Athlon etc)
next come various screens leading to black screen with Progress bar along with something like "Windows is preparing install" and on go the brakes. Yep, it just sits there with progress bar doing its thing. How long? Long enough to cost me 12 hours of tinkering and the price of an XP disk with a screwdriver through it.
Anyway, Mandrake 8.2, where to start? Well how about the flawless install on the desktop box. ALL hardware found automatically, GeForce 2 MX400, SB128PCI, SCSI rewriter, NIC, SCSI scanner etc. and sets the whole lot up for me.
Evertything worked out of the box. NVidia 3D drivers installed gives OpenGL acceleration and KDE3 rpms put the pretty (and powerful) front end on (read the README files, it's a doddle).
LAN and net config setup during installation so work straight off and the mount points icon in mandrake control centre has all the NFS shares on my server connected in under 2 minutes.
Then, just when you think it can't get better, the wizards! Shit they're good. During install choose expert mode and go through the servers section looking for Wizards_lib-xxxxx in each server category.
Once you're running you can set up servers e.g. Postfix, Apache, Bind, ProFTP and Samba etc. with a few mouseclicks to the point where they're functional and ready to be tweaked.
Remote admin through Webmin from any machine on the LAN, RAS dial-in or VPN make administrating the overall set-up a doss with no need to run into the office everytime we need to do something.
Believe me, prior experience with NT-4 / 2000 was a sodding nightmare in comparison to this! AND..... more bloody apps than I could ever afford to match in M$.
And that's where the bottom line is. For value for maoney XP will never match Mandrake
8.2 or SuSE 8 (we have both) and don't pull the bash it 'cos it's M$ as we have XP on a laptop in the office (OEM installed) as well as 98 and 95.
A side not is that I decided to put 8.2 on my laptop a 3 yr old K6-2 500 / 128MB RAM machine and it runs at a good useable speed. Try that with XP. Even the Lucent Winmodem works at full speed and KDE3 as well.
In all I now have Mandrake 8.2 on a Samba / NFS server, 2 desktop workstations and a laptop - Legally! Good enough for a tight fisted bastard bastard like me to join the Mandrake club with Star Office 6 into the bargain.
GOD I LOVE LINUX!