looking for a distro for a n00b

[getting.started]

I have done some research on different distro's and I have read some different books on linux, linux+ , Linux Security Basic's and some online literature.
I have looked and some of the screenshots found on distro's websites, mandrake 9.2 to me looked more promising than 10.0, but the fact that everything installed by mandrake is a rpm, makes it rather pointless to keep your mind on the edge, im sure you can gunzip and so forth, but as I read more into it, it was developed for people crossing over from windows, to be a more simple distro, Ehh Im not into mandrake. Redhat 9.0 no longer supported?? looked to be very commercial before the fact, SUSE allot of my hardware was not supported, my monitor and some other items. I went by a local scholl and messed around with suse and I wasnt impressed that much by the product, not that others couldnt use it, its just not me. Gentoo, nice, however I dont understand the installation process, FreeBSD, I understand this is a unix platform, we use Solaris at work, but the most authority the give me at work is changing my own password on each terminal. so some direction would be great.

I have build a shuttle box

it is a AMD AK39N
with 512 PC3200
a 120gig drive with 2 partitions
a sony CRX225e
a ATI Radeon 64mb AGP
a 100mb Iomega Zip Drive
and the monitor is a KDS Xtreme Flat

I also have a older laptop I wouldnt mind making a linux machine, but I have heard that linux isnt kind to laptops....its a HP P3

[XiaoKJ]

Read the other forums. its very very very obvious and everybody has the answer as its posted again and again.

the answer is MEPIS of course -- use a live-cd and try installing it. a live-cd will automate your process by a lot and therefore you should try it. its aim is to be as easy as possible. the new version seems to be SimplyMEPIS 2004.2 by now, and it works great for me.

of course, if you think gentoo is very complicated, you should also see very well that gentoo's install docs are so detailed that just plainly following suit gets you your system. Slackware is gd too -- just install full and your system will work. Debian's sarge installer is easy with better autoconfiguration. don't even mention FC,SUSE,MDK with graphical help and installers. But nothing beats live-cds like Knoppix as they autoconfig almost all of your system to make up your system :D

[getting.started]

I looked at bootup distros like mepis, only thing im not crazy about is you have to weed out what you dont want in the there aftern the install. Mepis wasnt bad.

[infiniphunk]

A good place to start is by spending a bit of time with installing and unistalling stuff with mepis. Get back to me after you've tried installing from apt-get a few times; you'll see then what's so good about it.
Just remember that some liveCD distributions suit different systems better or worse. Mepis does my desktop better than knoppix, but for my girlfriends laptop knoppix is better.

Check out this (http://www.frozentech.com/content/livecd.php)

live discs are so cool.

[getting.started]

you say that Knoppix is a better laptop distro, do they have better laptop support that other distro's?
I have a hp Pavilion N5340 that needs to be formatted properly.

[knute]

I say, pick one. They all work pretty much the same, and if you are a poweruser, and want complete control over your system, you will find GUI based tools to be limited and clunky after a time.

Personally, I started out with Mandrake, and got that configured exactly how I liked it, then got bored, so changed to debian. I found that I got hooked on the wizards and such, and that I truely liked editing text files to change configs. :D

So, find a distro that interests you and try it. The worst that will happen is that you don't like it, then try another one.

[EnigmaOne]

I'll give you the perspective of personal experience here...

I've churned through an insane number of different distros over the years, and like many of them for different reasons. It's really hard to pick a single one for myself, so I run a bunch of 'em at home.

I've also tried to roll-out certain distros to dyed-in-the-wool windoze fanatics, with varying degrees of success, and a lot of fine-tuning for individual businesses and personal styles. It can be a pain, but it can also be fun.

Recently, I overcame my disdain for Lindows/Linspire, and actually gave it a try on one of the kid's machines. They have made some admirable advances in the venue of usability and task automation--and some of their security concerns are less of a worry now.

Linspire really doesn't have a place in my computing/networking paradigm, and I personally don't care for it that much...BUT...
...for my 100% Noobie-to-Linux customers, it's a fantastic tool in weaning them from the "Curse from Redmond."

I wondered just how good it would be for a guy I know who has never used anything but xp. (Short computing experience, and nothing but windoze experience. Potential nightmare ahead!)

I built him a machine, as a result of an earlier request on his part, and asked him to be my guniea pig on a bit of an experiment (a $50.00 discount helped persuade him to cooperate).
He got the new machine, installed next to his old xp machine, with nothing but Linspire on it...and very few instructions from me.
After a little less than a week of daily hand-holding phone calls from him, I didn't hear from him for a while. I dropped by his place a couple of days back, expecting to find that he had gone ahead and installed xp on the new machine; only to find that he had downloaded and burned a Linspire CD and installed it on his old xp machine.

He's the kind of guy who will run out of the room, in terror, at the mere sight of a DOS prompt...and he's gone Linux-only!

Linspire might be worth a look, if you want to cut your teeth a bit on Linux, before tackling the more advanced stuff...then again? ;)