No I don't mind helping at all. Always glad to help someone experience Linux.
I am not familiar with RAID as I have not run it with either Windows or Linux. I know that some RAID controllers can be a bit of a pain to set up with Linux. One thing to remember with Linux is that driver support is kinda spotty especially for the latest and greatest technologies or bells and whistles. This is because almost all hardware is designed to work with Windows. Sometimes it takes a while for the Linux community to catch up. A perfect example is the Winmodems. These have been a complete nightmare for Linux.
OK...I think you should start with either Linux Mandrake or RedHat Linux. There are probably the easiest to install and configure and both offer great hardware support right out of the box. You can download them from
www.linuxiso.org. There are three disks for each distro but for a basic install all you need is the first disk. The other disks just contain extra bells and whistles. Each disk is about 650MB so if you don't have a broadband connection, it might take a while to get. Make sure you are using a good FTP program when downloading files of this size. You will then have to burn the .iso images to a CD in order to install.
Hope this helps a bit. I know it is a lot to think about but I think it is nice to know where you are going before you start the journey.
freezinbutt