....another vote for debian:
I am pretty much in the not-so-newbie, but still clueless category, at least as far as real programming is concerned, but I find debian rock-solid and safe, and with synaptic, installing new stuff is a dream.
Of course, on-line installation can be long-winded for first-time installation, or for an upgrade after a long interval, but as long as your connection remains in place, and you realise that "default" answers are almost always okay to those pesky questions (it tells you this, as well), it can't go wrong.

Peter

There is a textmode version of firstboot. I don't think Gtk2 is needed here. The same statement is applied for system-config-network which actually calls system-config-network-tui if there is no GUI present in this system.

If you are so sure gtk2 isn't needed do,
If its not needed there won't be any messages regarding dependencies.

I have a new Tadpole Talin 15 (P4) running SUSE. Having glanced thru the System Info, I still cannot find what version I am running - Can you suggest where I determine the version ?

I'd say for a linux learner "the" distro is the Slackware. It's easy and quick to install. After installation you have to config everything by hand so you learn the soul life of linux well. And if you make a huge mistakes like I did, and still do, you can install system quickly back.

Once you learn the system and start to use it seriously, then use Gentoo. Installing KDE takes 10h with 3800+ X2, so if it breaks because some newbie issue, it starts to irritate quite a bit I installed it about six times before I got it to work good Now I know a lot more about portage system and few things besides that. Managing the portage issue is a huge part in gentoo. Once that is learned, everything falls in it's place

So, use Slackware first and then Gentoo. That's my suggestion.

Thank you for the suggestions. In the documentation somewhere it does mention that Sun took SUSE and customised it ... it probably is a few years old due to the 2003 in the message below.

When I use "cat /etc/issue" the system says "Welcome to Sun Java Desktop System 2003".

I've been using Mandriva 2005. A relatively pleasant experience but I hoped when installing 2006 to find that certain errors had been fixed. I never did get to check that because I very soon ran into problems that had not existed previously. I have decided not to persevere with Mandriva.

I installed SuSE 10 instead. It seems to me to be more carefully constructed than Mandriva. Two unexpected shortcomings. First, there seems to be no easy access to NTP update. Secondly, I can find no mechanism for adding to or altering the system menu.

Thus, I am still looking. I am deterred by talk of the work required to install Slackware and Gentoo. There is enough work involved in remedying hardware incompatibility without spending many hours on the basic installation.

I like the sound of Debian except for the time lag in updating. Getting newer kernels is particularly important if you want to avoid hardware hassles. I must admit I am having trouble finding a distro with more appeal than SuSE. Xandros seems to feature very old packages. Centos seems to warrant further examination.

PS. There's a lot of information and many, many useful links at http://distrowatch.com/

Have you considered Ubuntoo ?

Regards
Shelton.

Aha! I installed Kubuntu around December 2005. There are two KDE programmes which I use a lot. I had to manually configure the monitor settings and to do that properly required research (which I never got done), since I had no manual (I've almost forgotten what a manual is). Then, to get the OS into decent shape I had to download a lot of material from the web, which is a pain on a dialup connection, particularly when the modem is not recognised by the OS. That's one experience I don't want to repeat. The installer also (without any choice on my part) installed software I did not want, like old versions of OpenOffice and a browser (don't remember which).

Since my last post, I've looked at Centos again. For some reason (unexplained) they have three branches on the go and all use old kernels.

Next stop, Arch.

Late addition

Just thought I would add - dual booting is no fun.
Running a distro inside a virtual machine (VMWare) on XP is excellent fun.
Better is having another box to run Linux.

You really want to learn Linux?
Dig up an old P1 200MHz box with 64M RAM and a few G of disk and load on Slackware but without any X (and KDE and stuff obviously) and stick it in a corner out of the way.
Use Putty on windoze to access the box and get web and mail services running.
That's highly educational and a whole lotta fun