I believe that it's not said nearly enough: If you're going to jump into linux, have
http://www.tldp.org handy at all times, and of course google groups and google. It doesn't matter all that much which distro you choose to get started with. Obviously something like Gentoo will scare you away, but most of the other ones are pretty straightforward.
What I always tell my friends when they start talking about switching to Linux is to "not give up". You'll get very frustrated with it and think "well I could do this so easily with Windows!!! Stupid linux!!!". You've got to remember that linux is NOT windows! It can do everything windows can do, and then some, but you've really got to approach it as a completely different computing experience rather than a drop-in replacement for windows.
/dont know why but i felt all that just needed to be said