First, I know how to use Linux (Red Hat, SuSE) but my experience
is limted. I don't yet have much of an understanding
of which Distro is suited for what. I DO know some Shell Scripting, installing and other general knowledge stuff that puts me above a true novice.

The machine will probably be a dual boot machine, with Linux as the main OS and some
version on Windows as the other. I need windows for Maya more then anything.
I need a distro thats good graphically, one I can work on different graphic intensive stuff in.

Right now I'm a bit partial to SuSe or Red Hat, but any suggestions would be appreciated, especially with some explanations on why.

Thanks

My personal opinion is that Red Hat is a bit to proprietary for my taste. I have really good luck with Mandrake (and based on Red Hat) but it may be slower that you want. I have heard Slackware is really good, although I have not tried it myself.

Speed is important, but its the graphical support I need. I dunno what card I plan to use yet. I'd like a 3D Labs card or something, but who knows. More than anything I was curious if any of the distro's are reviewed as good for graphics (not games, graphics i.e. 3D modeling/animation and 2D graphics like GIMP.)

Never tried Mandrake, but so far I've gotten several suggestions for it. Maybe because its so simple to use.

newbies should use in my opinion fedora , knoppix or mandrake to get started quickly. I never tried suse and with novell acquisition, i will probably never will, download or pay for it.

every distro can boot graphically but not all distro configure it like it by default. slackware is fast , debian is fast, source distros are even faster.

if you don't want to bother reading use mandrake and get familiar with mandrake control center.

for you graphic card check xfree website to see if it is supported. I don't own a card like yours so check the xfree site, and distro forums or google for it.

Since we don't really condone piracy here....

Maya IS available on Linux. http://www.alias.com/eng/products-se...irements.shtml

It says that for Linux it was built for RedHat™ Linux® 7.3 or 8.0, but I think that if you could find out which dependancies it has for those versions, you could install those and then have Maya working on Linux.

Oh, thanks. I didn't know that. I'm still using 3.0 and haven't looked into
newer versions much. Its so expensive. I may just have to upgrade.

im using 7.3 on an old pentium processer and it works rather fast ( well kinda) but its way beter than 3.0 as for the gui u can change it any way u want email me telling me wat u want to change and il tell u how to tweak it in KDE

I believe he's talking about Maya, not Redhat....

no red hat

Ouch, that hurts....