Well done on taking the plunge, Linux isn't bad at all if you have time to learn and a wee bit of patience.
I have to say, the distributions out now have come such a long way from the old 'compile everything yourself', command line install fun of old
I configured manys a server like that on early RedHat distros and the like, and just getting the thing to boot was an achievement in itself, let alone having a GUI OS
Come to think of it, I've never had a GUI Linux distro in this house, all my servers that still use it are command line only. Have used a few of the more recent ones just to try them though.
You've hit the nail on the head about the only real issue you'll have with Linux - driver support. Most of them tend to be cobbled together and self written by enthusiasts groups and the like, so unless you run nothing but mainstream hardware, you may find you have to do a bit of digging to make your stuff work. All part of the fun though, and it does teach you a few things
Ciarán
in here!
I had an old magazine copy of Linux Fedora 9 and installed it onto a backup pc I had lying around. It's quite nice to use and not dis-similar to XP. I used Mozilla Thunderbird to bring my emails in from Outlook Express after a bit of trial and error. And for some reason browsing with Firefox is a doddle compared to the nightmare it was trying to use it with Windows. Once this pc was up and running I turned my attention to my No1 pc. I saved all my important files to disc then formatted the hard drives and tried to install Fedora 9. Well no matter how hard I tried I couldn't get it to install for some reason 
I made another search and found a copy of PCLinuxOS I downloaded last year. This installed fairly painlessly and looks more like Windows than Fedora! I have Thunderbird running on here also and have played a few Mp3's on the media player as well. Generally speaking browsing is lightning fast and the only (few) problems I have are graphical in that some of the screens appear to be too large for the monitor and I can't work out how to resize them yet. Also I'm not sure if I'm running the correct graphic card drivers. AFAIK Linux graphic drivers tend to be generic as the main software houses are slow to respond to their needs. Its early days but I'm quite liking the experience and with further use I'm sure I'll become more adept. 
. One member's dogged persistance eventually found the problem. He sussed I was trying to run my fairly modern system on an out of date version of PCLOS and it wasn't capable of supporting all my hardware. Last night I downloaded the 2009.1 iso, installed it and all of a sudden, after what seems like years of problems with this pc, it is now perfect. 
If you've ever thought of ditching Windows there really are alternatives now so give it a go. You won't be disappointed.