Hello all. I'm new to the site and I'm looking for some advice. I work as a senior desktop support tech for a small international college in southern Vermont. I've been the the computer business for 10 years and I've been a Windows guy who's always wanted to progress to using Linux. My first encounter with Linux was an off the shelf copy of Red Hat 5 that I had little success with. Since then, I've tried several distros and never really stuck with any of them. Usually I would have too many problems making everything work and usually the machines I'd use weren't Linux friendly. About a month ago I signed up for a computer loan from my work. I went hunting for a laptop and finally settled on an HP nx9420. One of my decisions to buy this is it seemed to be Linux compatible with little or no effort. The other reason for looking to do more with Linux is a change in senior management at work. Two VP's just hired were hired from Microsoft. Enough said. Anyway, my question is about distros. If I check HP's site about Linux on the nx9420 all they talk about is Novell and Suse. I've played with Suse before but I'm not sure it's the right distro for me. I'm coming from a Windows world and I've never worked in a Novell enviroment. At work, the only Linux boxes we have are two Ubuntu boxes running "Breezy Badger". No one really knows how to run them. Our network manager has fooled around with it and had mild success but it's mostly guess work. My plan is to dual boot my laptop with Linux and XP. I've downloaded a copy of Linux XP but I haven't done anything with it yet. Any suggestions?

I would suggest that you sneak into the VPs' office at night and install Linux over top Windows.

Seriously, though, backup anything you might already have on the laptop and install Linux. Any of the top 15 or 20 distros at distrowatch.com would be a reasonable choice. They're popular enough to have a large user base from wence to seek help. Of course, I would recommend Gentoo or CLFS. As someone once said, "Just do it."

You also might want to wade through XavierP's Brand New UltraMegaSuper "Which Distro" Thread. Personally, I wouldn't choose a distro that was trying to be as XP like as possible unless it had other features I was looking for as well. Linux is not Windows, so why try to make them the same even in appearance?

Whatever you choose, install a couple of window managers/desktop environments (KDE and GNOME and XFCE and etc.) Do the same for other packages. Remember, it (usually) only costs your time to install. Eventually you'll gravitate to one or the other and can remove the one(s) you don't like. It's always good to get others opinions, but trying it for yourself is the only way to really know.

Finally, bookmark www.linuxquestions.org. Those guys are the best when you need help.

I'm a programmer who has used Linux at home from Slackware 2.2 days. If you are coming from the Windows world I think you would like either OpenSuse, which is quite friendly, or Xandros which is based on Debian. Each will be a pleasure to run, and have all the advantages of the Linux environment.