Need help for a right distro
 

I want to switch to linux from windows. I have an old system lying useless so I am thinking of installing linux on this one first.The config is P3 1.13 Ghz, 128 MB sdram, 20 gig hdd. Which distro would be suitable for this config?

Most any of them will run fine on that hardware. You might want to consider ways to make the distro you choose a bit lighter than usual. That, however, is a different question than the meaningless, answerless, ubiquitous, ...which distro.

Your computer is far from obsolete; it can do many useful tasks. You have a large selection from which to choose. You might consider trying one of the live disks to give you a feel for Linux, such as Ubuntu or Knoppix. If you go to Ubuntu, they will even send you burned discs for free. The discs can be permanently installed on your computer if you like. Since this seems to be your first exposure to Linux, I would stay away from Slackware or Gentoo. As you get more familiar with Linux, you might give one of them a try. I tend to gravitate toward Slackware, since it was my first distribution. Centos might be an excellet choice, since it is Redhat Enterprise under a different hat. Centos 4.4 is Redhat Enterprise 4. I wish you luck, and welcome to the world of cooperative computing.

I'm running debian etch on a pentium 3 930 MHz with 378 meg of ram, a nvidia graphics card (with nvidia binary drivers) and a PCI sound card (with hardware midi) I can do everything: Multimedia, streaming or otherwise, documents, full KDE GUI, web browsing, E-mail, and games but I doub't I could play Quake4 or anything that demanding, but then what are high powered windows machines for :) Find another 200 meg of ram and you're set :)

You can get debian etch here, I recomend typing installgui at the boot prompt to try the new installer. I also recomend not choseing a Desktop environment when given the choice because thats gnome. just go without, log on to the command line (as root) and type
If you actually like Gnome just select Desktop environment.

One final warning, if you chose debian you'll have to manually install binary graphics card drivers, non-free codecs, flash, java, etc. just ask around if you have any trouble.

Be prepared to do lots of homework. For a strict Linux newbie, I would only recommend a distro that does almost everything for you, unless you like completely burying yourself in a bottomless quagmire of programming rigamarole. You reap what you sew. I have had it relatively easy with Suse. I hear that they got the latest version right after botching the previous version bigtime. It's not so hard when you decide to be content with what it gives you (which is a lot, in the case of Suse), but when you start adding programs, that's when it starts getting technical. There are no installation wizards in Linux. You have to plug this device into this slot using a setting only accessible by entering in this command at the line prompt. That's what installing new programs turns into, unless you are content with the bare minimum functionality. I hear that some other user-friendly distros include Ubuntu, Mandriva, and Fedora. I believe that the latest Suse is called OpenSuse 10.2.

you can install any distro you want on that, here are a few personal recommendations:

Kubuntu
http://www.kubuntu.org/

Mandriva
http://frontal2.mandriva.com/en/downloads/mirrors

PCLinuxOS .92
http://ftp.nluug.nl/pub/metalab/dist...glish/preview/
ftp://ftp.nluug.nl/pub/metalab/distr...glish/preview/

Mephis
http://www.mepis.org/

if your concerned about 'bloat' you might want to look into some minimalistic Distros

Vector Linux 4.3
http://www.vectorlinux.com/

DSL
http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/

Puppy Linux
http://www.puppylinux.org/user/viewpage.php?page_id=3

Slackware
http://www.slackware.com/

BeatrIX
http://www.watsky.net/

Elive
http://www.elivecd.org/

if your still unsure of the distro try these distro choosers:

http://eedok.voidofmind.com/linux/chooser.html
http://www.zegeniestudios.net/ldc/

thanks a lot ppl.