Ok, I am trying to make sense of what you are saying to me as I am pretty much a newbie really,
So..if I take out a Linux hosting package I can pretty much carry on as I am, I use terrapin to upload files to my current host and I have cpanel on one host and easy admin on the other and I work fine with these two so don't really want to start learning new packages unless I have to as it hurts my head too much not being fluent in this game ...

if you know what I mean..and I have been looking at Hostgator this evening and I like what I see.
So..... if I am ok to sign up with them on windows XP are Hostgator a good host and will a newbie-ish like me manage on Linux do you think ?