Ubuntu server..and drivers
"I always thought Linux will one day take over Windows, but the problem are always to do with support and drivers"
It's not as dire as it seems. I am working at a computer surplus where we recently started putting Ubuntu onto all machines sold (7.04 until recently, and now 7.10). (see note 1) In short, other than the odd wireless driver, everything seems to work out of the box.
Realistically the only weakness is wireless drivers. Most chips are supported, but unfortunately the ones that are not are pretty common. There IS a "Windows Wireless drivers" choice in the system menu, though, to let you pop in a Windows driver CD and install the driver via ndiswrapper. 7.04 blew up on a couple NetServers and the like (it could be gotten to work with a little command line hackery); 7.10 fixed this. I've thrown this onto a P2-350 through 3.0ghz P4 with hyperthreading; video, sound, and ethernet has worked straight almost every time (see note 2); it supports tons of printers, cameras, and scanners.. I'm shocked so much could be crammed onto one CD.
note 1: We were putting XP onto some systems, if they had the XP license sticker on them. However 1) We couldn't get anything in writing saying MS wouldn't hassle us for this eventually. As a second point, we were concerned about the licenses failing to validate even if we were legally in the right. 1.5) We aren't a used computer store, we're a surplus outlet, and so there's no tech support; despite that, people were breaking WinXP and then trying to get us to support them too much. It was even worse with blank machines; people would ask crap like why their Office CD wouldn't install Windows.... we don't get these questions anymore, I think these people simply don't realize Ubuntu isn't Windows 8-). 2) Everyone where we work now uses FreeBSD or Linux.. the remaining Win2K user found the games he played ran under Wine, and a bit faster at that, so switched recently. So, we wanted to spread the love. 3) TIME! It was taking over 1 hour a machine to run an unattended WinXP install (not including the bit where it stopped in the middle to ask for the license key.) Even when customized for a given model machine, it would not install stuff at times (for instance, wtih *12* sound drivers put on the CD for a given model machine, some would still install without sound support, requiring manual fixing after the fact...) The unattended Ubuntu install takes about 15 minutes on a slower machine, down to about 5 minutes on something quick like a 2.8-3.0ghz machine.
note 2: A few Dells had a BIOS that didn't set up the i865 video properly, causing Ubuntu to freak out. We found a WinXP install on these ALSO freaked out; I have no idea how the previous user was possibly using these machines without working video 8-).