I was contemplating buying the following parts for a new computer, and wanted some advice:
SolTek SL-K890Pro Socket 939 VIA K8T890 mobo
AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ processor
Western Digital Raptor WD740GD 74GB HDD (10,000rpm)
Sapphire Radeon x850XT 256 MB PCIex16 video card
Lite-on DVD burner SOHW-1693S
Crucial Memory (2x512MB DDr400)
Antec TruePower II 550 power supply
Windows XP Pro 64 Edition

Does this system look decent for the cost (once I add in MS Office, a keyboard, mouse, and a case, total cost is ~$1600)? Any bottlenecks that I could avoid?

Once I get this system up and running, I want to reformat my existing computer and put a version of *nix on it. Any suggestions for how to learn *nix?