Almost sounds like you're daring me to dive in head first! I expect I'll go with Ubuntu initially if only because I'm kind of familiar with it. That and I won't go into future shock by ditching my shiny GUI's straight away - my fear is if i do this I'll be so overwhelmed it'll just put me off the whole idea. A gradual descent into the darkness is what i desire!

I'm definitely down with learning Unix in the long run, but my it's not my primary goal. I want to learn new programming languages in particular, but I'm sure to get where i want with those it'll be impossible to avoid dabbling with Unix, in which case i expect I'll learn it by proxy

A year?! I was hoping for around two weeks! I jest, I expect this to be ongoing for years just as your adventures have. I'm also being realistic that between work, my girlfriend and learning guitar i don't expect to be making rapid progress, but I'm content with that :)