1. I guess it depends what you consider annoying. I find the Linux distriubtion I use (Gentoo) to be very stable, very configurable, and light on resources (due partly to my choice of window manager) but when I ran a fully XP machine a few years ago it very rarely crashed either or BSOD'd, I guess because I took a lot of care in installing & looking after it.
What is sometimes frustrating with Linux is configuring stuff but then I prefer to edit config files rather than use a gui, it's just the learning curve that can throw you off a bit but I like the way Linux doesn't hold your hand even after you've grown up (but then ,that depends on how the Linux
distribution has been put together, see tthe last point). If I was the sort of person who got easily annoyed, I'd be quite annoyed and frustrated that Windows XP at work insists on telling me I've printed such and such a document every time I use the print function (can't figure how to turn this feature off) - it also tells me things like '10 pages have now been printed' even if I only sent a 5 page document to the printer (and received 5 pages back).
2. I wouldn't rely on Wine or Cedega to get your native Windows applications to run - your mileage may vary. There are loads of great programs that work natively in Linux (and are generally free!!!!!). Possibly consider a dual boot with Windows if there are certain Windows programs that you absolutley
must run - I dual booted between Mandrake Linux and Windows for about 6 months before I decided I prefered Linux and could cope more or less without Windows.
3. This question is asked a lot. It really depends. I suppose a good Linux distribution to begin with is one that is easy to use and install, with minimal configuration and nice dialogue box's - it gives the user the chance to explore what can be done in Linux without having to go through a whole load of headaches.
Quite a few people seem to like
Ubuntu or
Suse. I like
Gentoo but it can take hours to install a desktop environment (with lots of nice applications like Firefox, Bluefish, and free games etc.
Have a look in the stickied
distro poll for other Linux distribution suggestions.
BTW, a Linux distribution is basically the Linux kernel with a load userland tools and quite often a gui (but completey optional) to make it workable in different environments (server, workstation, media box etc).
, personally i see and use linux for server puposes only really