its called Mac OS X,
I've had to much problems with windows to call it safe for the dummy
Macs however are different, If I had the money (which I don't, not even close i'm 14 I need to buy a car soon too) I'd buy a apple 15" Powerbook
the first computer I ever used was some sort of old macintosh( it was a beige one) my school had when I was 5, I had no prob using it

Actually these days consumer aimed mac computers don't cost any more than PC's. Then again, if you don't have the money, you don't have the money. I have that problem. If I had the money, I'd throw my PC out of the window.

my* compaq presario X1000 is like over 500 dollars cheaper then the cheapest 15 inch Powerbook, I'm old enough to get a job now but me spending 2000 on a computer would drive my parents nuts as they think cars and dirtbikes and stuff would be a better investment I'd hate to be the kid who walks to school when I turn 16 though, even though the nearest high school is only 1 and a half miles away

*ok maybe not mine but close enough

That's odd. But then again, we're living in different parts of the world, I presume.

Yes, but windoze bashing is much more fun,

I looked around for a distribution aimed at writers that have old computers.
I found distributions for old computers, but none that specifically target writers.
So, I'm creating my own distribution (based on Puppy Linux).

If everyone would work on creating only a few distributions, there wouldn't be such a thing as an 'OS for writers'.

Everyone has his/her needs.
You're not listing the 'good' and the 'bad' Linux distributions. You're just listing the Linux distributions that are 'good' for you.
The distribution I'm working on, will be used by Linux newbies. I expect it to work just fine for them

Try Ubuntu and tell me what you think of that distro.

But you're not telling , which current version you tried.
You post has the date-stamp of 4-18-2005 and we had two "current" versions at that time , both in development-phase : VL5.0Dynamite (RC4) and VL5.0SOHO.
Also , there is the dead branch of VL5.0GX(which was a "sandbox-version" for the devs to play around with.
Or were you referring to the final of 4.3 , which came out last year?

That entry just doesn't make any sense without mentioning of the proper version.

yeah theres no apple stores around my city (in the midwest of USA) so i got the prices from apples webpages they costed around $2000 USD, the average PC notebook is what? $1200 though G4's are faster then Pentium M processors and Macs come with more software

I'm experimenting with loading different, linux distros onto a machine with the following spec and peripherals attached:
Spec
Mobo Gigabyte GA7DXE Bios version F5
768mb Ram
Athlon 2400XP processor
Test Hard Drive 40GB (solely for test Distro)
Nvidia FX5200 Graphics card
Ethernet 100/10mb Lan card
Leadtek PVR2000 TV Tuner & Capture Card
USB 2.0 expansion Card
Genius 5.1 Sound Card

Peripherals
Samtron 78e monitor
P/s 2 Wheel mouse
101/102 UK Keyboard
Intel USB Web Camera
Black Widow 1248 USB Scanner
Epson Stylus C44UX printer
Microsoft Game Pad
Etec ADSL Router.
Nec e228 mobile phone

What am I looking for from my experimentation?

The most out of Box compatible Linux Distro that get's the whole of that lot up and running from a straight install of the Distro only.(Not much to ask surely....)

The Bench mark I'm comparing with is WindowsXP Pro, which after just installing it as a 'distro', gave me a desktop, bereft of usable software, a working mouse,keyboard and Monitor which I could alter the screen resolution on, As it couldn't get the USB controller working there were no other pieces of hardware up and working. Oh and the internet was a no no.
I didn't bother loading all those tiresome driver disks for any of the PCI cards so they didn't work either.

I am finding that nearly all linux distro's give me more than that but not all, some recommended ones fail to boot on the test machine but boot happily on a less encumbered machine, and some earlier versions of particular distro's give me more than the latest versions.

The joy of the experiment is that I am taking an approach which will eventually reduce my distro choice down to one that is almost perfect for my machine and peripherals

It might also be an out of date distro version, leaving me with the fun of carefully updating my application software.

I am aware that I probably will not find a perfect match, but I have already discovered that Mandriva(rake) 10.1 and Fedora Core 3 mistakenly advise that a Lan Cable is not connected, Knoppix 3.8 says otherwise, earlier versions of those 2 distro's do allow internet connection with no false warnings.

So not only am I looking for the right Distro for my needs but for the right version of the right distro, I could be some time, but I'm also building my knowledge of setting up many flavours of Linux.

Mad Malc