Felix, debian won't be really fast cause all packages are compiled for i386 (windows PCs are i686 now and since some time). You can get it all customised if you know a bit about linux though and then it's definitely faster than mandrake simply cause you only have installed what you need. In this regard I think slackware and gentoo are a lot faster since the packages are made for i686 (I have slackware too but I don't have time to configure it all atm so I don't use it much)
The few days of dedication are right if you start out as a complete newbie on the stable version. I hear the newer are a bit easier (configure more if you're newbie) and the software isn't too old. Now I can setup my debian machine in like 1.5 hour. About 1 for the minimal install and the software I want (still minimal [img]smile.gif[/img] ) and another for recompiling the kernel.
From my own experience I don't have much to say about mandrake. I started with debian. It had some things I had to configure but that was because I used woody (stable over 3 years old now), sarge is supposed to setup a lot more automatically. Then I installed mandrake and hated it because it's bloated so I removed and threw the disks away after 3 minutes in it.
Any distro can do what you want. It's just about how many time you want to put in. Like want to learn a bit and have it customized or go with all the preset options and preinstalled software. As in you just want to use it. But just as in windows if something doesn't work you have to know a bit of the system. You have that knowledge in windows now but there's only one way to get it in linux.
Also which programs do you want to use for graphical editing. Cause there's no photoshop for linux, and getting it to work might be quite hard. The gimp doesn't have some of the lesser used functions.
Remember you'll have to upgrade packages sometime or another and packages aren't very small at times. Mandrake uses a lot of large (bloated as well IMO
) programs like KDE.
If you think it's worth your money then buy it. Is it worth your money? Depends. If you just want to use it and have minimal configuration yourself I guess it's quite good. But it might still be something doesn't work exactly like you want it or not at all. And that's when you shouldn't complain you have to get your hands dirty and fix it
Chance is quite big that you might like something different. If you don't think that describes you you could go for another distro as well and maybe donate to it or to a program you like a lot.
You see there are a lot of options and that's the fun of free software (free as in freedom)
Also never expect you don't have to learn anything to use it.
Have fun!