Dear friends, I am a total newbie as a Linux wannabe user who wants to become an experienced Linux user. I am an experienced user of Windows but I have absolutely no knowledge of Linux. I have never used Linux. But, I now have an extra older computer that came with Win98 that I would like to install Linux on. It is my desire to learn Linux and possibly convert my main computer to Linux in the future once I am very familar with Linux. As an inexperienced newbie who wants to learn about Linux will you answer these questions for me? Keep in mind that I know absolutely nothing about Linux.

The computer that I want to install Linux on in order for me to learn more about Linux is an older computer as follows:
533 MHZ Intel Processor
64MB Ram Memory
15GB Hard Drive
It is my plan to completely format the hard drive and then install Linux as the only Operating System on this computer.

(1) Which Linux operating system do you recommend that I use and why do you feel this is the best choice for me?

(2) Can you recommend a basic book (that is printed on real paper) that will tell me how to maintain and use the Linux operating system you recommend in your answer to question #1 above?

This is my very first post to this forum and as a real newbie I ask you to please forgive me for any mistakes or errors that I may have made. I am grateful for this forum. Thank each of you individually for reading this post.

Sincerely,
Gin-U-Wine

For this hardware I would suggest
DLS, Puppy, debian with xfce ...
However you should consider adding more RAM

Another option is to use live cd's on your main computer.
It will run from CD, no changes to your HD
This way you can test more recent and full distributions.
For the beginner I suggest ubuntu

For some books, take a look at
http://www.foogazi.com/2008/03/30/10...-you-must-own/