Figuring that Slack is a bit too much for me (right now anyway). I just want a newbie distro I can use to fully master it and then go on to something higher. I was thinking DSL, is this a good idea? anyone have any screens for it? Thanks.

DSL may be good for you, but if you are very new to linux you may have problems with fluxbox, the only wm for it. Also, it is still a rather buggy distro. I advise Mepis, it is a live c designed around being installed to the hard drive. Also, it is based on Debian, so Mepis is good for learning. It uses KDE.

eh, too late. I got impatient and I downloaded it. I have no regrets though, I like to be expirimental with distros. Being bugging worries me slightly but meh. It's at 60%...

There are many, many great live distros...but my opinion is that you'll never get the full logic until you install Linux and use it regularly. Good luck with DSL! Hope it works out for you!

Using fluxbox as your window manager will definitely get you out of the Windows mindset It's what I use, reckon it's the best thing since sliced bread but everybody has different opinions.

Linux? Just "Linux"? Don't you mean Unix?

And thanks for the good luck, I hope I can manage the install OK.

I could be wrong but I'm reasonably sure that you personally will never use Unix(tm) ever. Linux, BSD, AIX, HP-UX are all Unix-like operating systems but none of them are Unix.

I know and realize that. Unix scares me.

No, didn't mean Unix. I meant to type "Linux," as I did.

So there's just a straight up Linux? If I would have known that I probably would have done that... Although it's probably the real deal stuff similar to Unix right? I think I'll be content with the distros until I feel comfortable (just a newbie to Linux right now).

Replying from DSL, and the hardest part was burning the ISO file. There wasn't an install to run, it's just there, I found that out to be really cool but it is limited hence the name. Does this run entirely off the disc or something? If I take the disc out will it crash? I should put this on a pen drive but I'm not for sure on how to do that...

I think I might try Suse next but I dunno.. Or maybe Knoppix (after all DSL is just a small Knoppix basically).

Linux and UNIX are just names not actual things (they where but now the are labels for a lot of things).

Mandrake, Ubuntu for beginners and Gentoo or LFS, if you want to spend a week on installing (what you learn it is worth the pain)

I love DSL. It's great distro for the size. Feather Linux is a little larger, but the same idea.

I would definelty suggest using Knoppix to use KDE and get a different feel than fluxbox. That way you can try some of the features without having to install it. And yes, its running off just the cd. You can install it if you like, but its designed to be a livecd. DSL, Feather Linux, and Knoppix all run from the cd.

SuSE is good, just stay away from 9.1 personal. SuSE definitely is an easy distro and it has required less tweaking after install than other distros I've tried.

Personally, I use Fedora Core 3 with Gnome. It was a pretty straight forward install.

Try things out, see what you like. That's the beauty of Linux, there's a distro for everything. Don't hesitate to try a distro out. Worst case scenario: you don't like it and try another one instead.

Ah, just downloaded Suse 9.1 Personal unfortunately. Oh well.

You'll still get the feel of SuSE.

9.1 personal lacks a compiler and I believe a few other things that were deemed "unnecessary" for a personal desktop, but are pretty useful for every user.