No... Im not going to ask which is a nice fluffy distro for newbies, some people where probably going mental at the sight of another should-I-use-mandrake post.

What I would like to know - if anyone can spare the time and avoid any elitist tendancies - is what is the most modular distro so I can add only the things that I want ...but... preferably without having to compile everything.

I would have a go at my own build of linux using the kernel etc but I am not having much luck at finding comprehensible guides for that sort of think on the net.

Id say Debian or ArchLinux.

Gentoo is very configurable, but you have to do a lot of compiling.

I think I will try ArchLinux or Debian then - after I have gone and compared them.

Thank you for the quick reply.

Why are all the downloads so big? Even the smallest download of ArchLinux is apr. 100mb - the windows installation I am using at the moment is only 50meg when installed (excluding swap file).

Removed.

Try Red Hat 9 or even 7.3

Because you are downloading the installation disk iso. Just as your windows installation cd has a lot more than 50 megs of data on it (around 600mb for win98 SE), so will a Linux installation disk in many cases.

That said, you can actuall Debian Sarge from a 59mb iso.
http://gluck.debian.org/cdimage/testing/netinst/i386/

You can also do a hard disk install of Damn Small Linux (47mb iso) and use apt to set up a Debian system.
http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/