What is the make + model + any other info about this system you can provide?

Reasons why I (and my company) don't buy HP gear... :-( So, what has Google shown you? Anyway, post the full make + model + options (motherboard + CPU) and anything else you can think of, and we will see what we can find. In any case, I agree that a bios upgrade should be free.

Burn and run some live distributions and see what you like best. If you can boot off of the USB drive, you can use Unetbootin to install a number of Linux live cd/dvd iso images on a thumb drive and boot/install from that if you don't want to, or can't, burn a bunch of CDs and/or DVDs. Here is a link to Unetbootin: http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Util-linux

The util-linux-ng package is a standard package, installed by default on RHEL 6.x and clones. Your server indicates that. Don't bother, unless there is something that you really need from the one you are proposing to install.

One other thing - I also run a variety of emulators for other CPU families (ARM, MIPS, etc) on these systems as well. I need to emulate an entire raft of mobile phone systems, which I do. All of this is done in virtual machines or emulated machines (different CPU types).

Usually Linux loads a lot faster than Windoze; however, the latest versions of Ubuntu are starting to get really bloated. Myself, in order to learn about and get comfortable with new operating systems, I don't dual boot them. Rather, I will install a virtual machine manager such as VirtualBox (free) and run the new operating systems in a virtual machine in my host OS. Examples:

At home, my main system is a Red Hat Enterprise Linux clone (Scientific Linux). I run Windows, other Linux systems, Solaris, QNX, and DOS in VirtualBox virtual machines.

At work, my main system is a Windows 7 laptop. I run Linux (several versions), Windows XP, and other systems in VirtualBox virtual machines.

Why? Because doing it this way I can allocate just as much system resources as I want to the operating system in question, and they don't mess with my main OS configuration. If I want to remove them entirely, it is a matter of deleting some files.