I've been using Mandrake since July and have pretty good success with it. However, there are a few things I'd like to do differently:
1. Make a partition so I can hibernate my computer
2. I have never been able to get TuxRacer of FlightGear to work (though it might be that my video card is not supported, I've read differing things about it).

I have a Dell Inspiron 4000 with 256 MB RAM. 10 GB hard drive, and a 700 MHZ PIII. I've checked out the Linux for Laptops site and people have had decent luck with most distros.

So the question is what distro would you recommend for someone who is not an expert yet, but is increasingly comfortable with Linux? I would like to try a new distro, but would also be fine with Mandrake.
Thanks in advance.
Andy

Mandrake is great! Why would you wamt to switch? I have found if a game or something don't work on one distro it won't work on distro X either, hardware issues! As far as putting the harddrive to sleep I am sure there is something you could do like compile your own kernel or something. I personaly would not give up on mandrake it is a great distro with great ease of use with a great community!

You might keep Mandrake and install another distro....just do what you need to make about a 3G partition, and load another distro.

If you haven't already this would be a good time to partition your drive with different partitions for

SWAP
/
/usr
/home
...and a partition to load another distro on to.

I have been thinking about the same thing; but, I already have the partitions.

I have already tried Lindows, Red Hat, Debian & Knoppix (HD install)...but:

I've been reading the docs for Gentoo and for Slackware....and Gentoo wins hands down.

I'll be installing it first...then some time later, probably Slackware.

Check out these awesome install docs:

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/gentoo-x86-install.xml

anti_microsoft - I don't want to give up on Mandrake, it is great. I just want to see how another distro is different. Ever since I dropped XP I'm pretty happy to mess around with my configuration, etc - so long as I have a CD-R handy to put all my documents on to, that is!

# Linux Distribution links:
A Beginner's Guide to Choosing a Linux Distribution
Reasons to Choose or Not Choose Linux
LWN distro list
elinux Linux Distributions