Thanks to everyone for the little bits of advice I have followed that 
now have me up and running with Linux.

1.) So far I am liking Mandrake 6.1--with my good harddisk and a bit 
of fiddling with Disk Druid, it was a breeze. I hope I made a good 
choice:   80 MB of swap space;  700 MB of root space; 600 MB of user 
space. (The rest is for Windows.)

Now, I am going to have to get my printer (a NEC SuperScript 860) 
running, PPP going and configured to connect to ATT Worldnet, an 
internal modem working which is liable to conflict with the system's 
3 other serial ports, and of course basic productivity software like 
imaging, office suite, email client, etc, in place.

Having KDE on my desktop, I now realize why Linux may not *quite* be 
ready for the mainstream:  It does NOT conceal its feature rich 
complexity: no dummy lights and idiot "wizards" (note the irony): 
just lots of tools that reveal exactly what the heck is going on 
under the hood. I suppose learning to use this operating system could 
actually teach me some genuine computer science--maybe I'll get over 
my Windows miseducation. For the first time, I feel I have an OS that 
I can actually believe is REALLY doing what it says it is DOING, and 
not something else. Actually, after years of "consumer grade" 
computing, I feel like I am in the cockpit of a Boeing 747 or 
something with Linux: thrilled with the "power" of such a big 
dashboard but also a bit overwhelmed with it. 

However, as is my compulsion, I did try to crash it, and it appears I 
DID. I opened files and folders like crazy and then the thing locked 
up--only the mouse pointer would move--four hours later the thing was 
still frozen. No idea how to recover from a frozen system. At least I 
had to put effort into crashing it, while in Windows I only have to 
blink.

Ok, enough with bottom of the learning curve babble. What would be 
the ideal "accelerated learning path" for mastering the fundamentals 
of using and administering this OS? Typical a lone ranger in using my 
computer, I suddenly feel the need for the company of geeks and 
gurus.  

Thanks for any help from y'all!

Mike