it's my first time trying to enter the world of linux.

so, i guess i should choose a distribution which won't be too complicated for a begginer such as i am and which will be compatible with components of my computer (and maybe windows os?)

could anyone help me with that?

i have: intel celeron 633 MHz (don't laugh ;
576 MB of RAM (SDRAM PC133);
ECS P6VAP-Me mainboard;
c-media v.90 modem;
Compex RE100ATX Fast Ethernet Adapter;
EPSON Stylus CX3600...

don't know if other stuff is important too...

TNX!

Welcome to LQ!

When you ask a question like this be prepare to get a bunch of different answers. Everybody will recommend that you use their favorite distro.

Most major distros will probably work for you (Fedora, Debian, Slackware, Gentoo, SuSE, Ubuntu, etc.). Many distros now have LiveCDs that you can boot and tryout without having to install them to your hard drive. This will let you see how well the distros hardware detection will work for you. Remember that LQ has linux distros available for download (http://iso.linuxquestions.org/).

[edit]
There are also a couple of less "major" distros that are pretty newbie friendly: PC Linux OS, Linspire, Dreamlinux, Xandros. Some of these distros are not free though.

If you can't make up your mind, take a look at this distribution chooser: http://www.zegeniestudios.net/ldc/.
[/edit]

Good Luck,
~Justin

SuSE 10.1 is fantastic... And very easy to use with the KDE GUI. Check it: http://en.opensuse.org/Download or read reviews: http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=suse

Good luck.

tnx people

Just a bit of slightly bias advice:

- Stay away from RPM distro's (Suse, Red Hat, Fedora), installing software can be a pain with all the dependencies.

- You Probably want to use KDE as your Window Manager. It is much more user friendly for someone switching from windows.

For these reasons I am going to suggest Kubuntu as the best linux distro for you. The main CD starts up as a live cd (lets you run the OS without touching your HD) and then install it if you like it.

Also, why do you want to use Linux? It sounds like it is to get away from windows (the most popular reason). In this case you might want to try PC-BSD. BSD is another flavor of unix and is somewhat similar to Linux. PC-BSD is really user friendly, but powerfull and secure at the same time.

You will probably also want to run windows at the same time, Right?
If you do I would recommend you do it like this:

Save all your data to a removeable device (DVD, External Hard Drive, etc.)
Use a live cd (Kubuntu will do find) and format your hard drive (erasing all data along with windows).

then Re-install windows, but this time only use about half of your Hard drive.

Then you can re-install linux on the remaining space.

It is possable to shrink a Windows partition, but it is not wise as it often ends up in lost data.


Good Luck and Welcome to Linux & LinuxQuestions!

Not true.
True.
Matter of opinion.

...snip...
Totally silly suggestion! Most distros will shrink the Windoze partition during installation freeing up space for installing GNU/Linux. What you are suggesting here is tripling his work for nothing.

i think i'll check out some workshops

i've been using linux (Debian) for a few years at uni... but the only installed my first distro a couple of months ago.

i think u'd want a distro that has a live-cd, like Kanotix or Ubuntu, because that will give u the experiance of linux without changing much.

From my experiance, Kanotix worked fine straight out of the box, its hardware detection is excellent. It comes with a lot of apps (probly too much), including VLC, Firefox, Konqeuror, Wine, Samba. Its Debian, which makes a breeze to download/update apps if its in the repository.

So i recommend Kanotix, if ur looking for easy installation.

PCLinuxOS is another good choice. It runs from a live CD so you can "try before you buy", it has KDE, and the hardware detection is robust.