Considering making the switch...

[Jazzman]

Hi all. Hope everyone's good.

I'm facing a swiftly dying hard drive (random deaths, loud noise, generally slow despite lots of cleaning and formatting) and out of storage, so about to purchase a nice new (quiet!) hard disk. In terms of an OS for it, I don't want to pay the exorbitant cost for Windows (the old hard disk was given to me with Windows already on it), and I am excited to read about linux being free and so varied.

There are just a few extremely novice-y questions I need answered, that Wikipedia didn't seem to know:

- What happens with my USB devices (webcam, mobile phone, external hard drive, memory sticks, printer, keyboard and mouse...) - will I need new drivers for all of those?

- I note the massive variation in Linux distributions: how do I know what's stable, simple and novice-friendly (i.e. similar to windows)? Any recommendations? Is there a 'dominant' distribution for Linux novices?

- Can one switch to another distribution without losing totally formatting the hard disk?

- Is it easy to get programs to read common file formats - mp3, wma, doc, xls, mpg, mp4 etc?

- Is WINE a viable solution to most or all of these problems?

Thanks - sorry for all the questions, but this is the only forum where I trust the answers I get! I am rather nervous about changing my primary PC in such a massive way...

Many thanks as ever

[Gecko]