Matt Wyant wrote:
[snip] 
> A) Am I jumping in over my head? I'm very proficient with computers,
> I've been programming since before junior high with various flavors of
> basic and c. I'm certainly not daunted by the shell, command line, or
> non-graphical interfaces, in fact, they hold some sort of sick romantic
> draw for me. Should I start with a more user-friendly distribution or do
> you think I can handle Slackware?

All politics aside, I would recommend Mandrake or Red Hat for a newbie
for one reason: Market share.  Because of their market share, there
are more books written for that distro, and more people using it (the 
definition of market share :) ) that can provide help when things go 
wrong, or when one wants to do something strange.

Regards,

George