First thing is first, software. Most of you know or could suspect from my posts that I'm much more interested in using software for productivity purposes then anything else...I rely on the GUI to keep a fast pace too. Naturally there are a few Windows applications I've grown very fond of such as Advanced Find & Replace and CuteFTP 6.0 as they seriously increase the efficiency and speed of my work environment. I fiddled with Wine and wasn't sure how to approach it...though I installed it in Ubuntu's package manager (which is a design credit to the Linux community) and by chance copied from XP to Ubuntu the installer for Advanced Find & Replace (AFR). It not only installed though it also works as far as I can tell...though I do need to test it in a LAMP environment...more later, first a screenshot!

Yes...I'm doing this in an emulated environment right now...it's a serious test though because since I have the two most critical Windows programs running I should be able to work with everything else just fine more or less.
The issue I have right now is that I don't know where applications belong nor do I know how to get XAMPP working.
I downloaded a copy of XAMPP for Linux and naturally it runs without the need for installation...the thing is where do I move the lamp folder to on the file system? I'm sure as heck not going to run it from my desktop!
Also how do I get Apache and MySQL services running with XAMPP? I have to do more reading on this I guess though if any one knows off hand it would speed things up...towards a direct install.
There are other issues on my mind of course...
1.) If (and I hope) I install this as a system level OS (versus emulated) is Linux going to start tinkering with my hard drives in RAID and mess up the file system? I presume it won't but want to avoid any unnecessary headaches.
2.) Drivers...I'll be upgrading from my 8800GT (which runs hot) to an ATI Radeon 5xxx series card for gaming (and cooler case temps) in a couple of months...though I've read about a lot of ATI driver issues...what should I know ahead of time?
3.) I need access to nTune or another application to adjust the fan speed on my 8800GT which runs at only 20% with the card idle at 185F/86C so I absolutely have to make sure I turn the fan speed up (until I replace the card) so this is mission critical (if I don't want a dead video card from the oh-so-intensive task of idle!) *dramatic music goes here*
4.) Video games...I don't play them too often and I can't test out 6GB installs with the small partition I've allocated to Ubuntu...my friend said he got World of Warcraft running so I'm curious about the general realm of popular 3D games (I also play some old school stuff, currently Diablo II and Pharaoh of late until my replacement PSU arrives).
For now I'm going to keep tinkering with Ubuntu and see what I can figure out on my own. Hopefully it's a more viable option then I previously thought it would be.