I've been trying to network WinXP with the Mandrake (10.1) distro of Linux with no success. Before I give up on Linux I want to try a different distro. Can anyone recommend which one to try, preferably with a GUI and a reasonable size. I don't want to spend days D/Ling.

I recommend Gentoo, but it's a little hard to install for newbies.

Giving up already?!
So many distros for your choosing!
Read about them, cho se what you like amd open road is ahead without closed windows and gates

http://distrowatch.com

Just go to www.linuxiso.org and have fun! You can download until your heart is content. I like SuSE myself, but they all are about the same.

How exactly would you like to network XP and Mandrake? Sharing a drive on XP and accessing it from Mdk, or the other way 'round? Or do you want to share a printer or something?

Gentoo, once you install it a few times and administer it for awhile, you start to really see the advantages of portage.

PCLinuxOS just released Preview 8 a day or two ago. I downloaded it (500ish mb on one cd). It seems to run well and do all I need it to ith ease. I'd recommend playing with it and deciding if there's enough there for your liking. BTW, I ran it all evening, editing my websites, reading email, listening to music (from my hard drive and from my wife's XP machine), surfing, and watching movie trailers. This was all from the LiveCD. it was reasonably quick for a CD-based distro. I'd recommend installing it to hard drive and trying it on for size. The latest Mepis was nice as well. I recommend either of these live cd's for newbies because the authors have included some things considered "non-free" like java, flash, realplayer, etc. Its a nice intro to the Linux world.

Or you could go with Gentoo......if you want to read the install manual every step of the way and if you don't mind waiting for the packages to compile (as you can see from the left, I use Gentoo). It does seem to be the most crashless and low-maintenance of all the 20+ distros I have played with.

And, of course, there is always the option of using the one you already spent so much time downloading - Mandrake. The problem with most free downloads, is that there is very little up front as far as "beginners help" and it can be a bit confusing setting things up. The last time I set up networking on my Mandrake install (yes, I used to run Mandy - see my username), I purposefully avoided the (much quicker) command line to see if it was possible to point and click my way through it. It is. You merely have to create a folder to share from in your /home directory and then right-click on the folder's icon. Choose sharing (sound familiar?). Then you follow the prompts. Log out of your user acct and back in. Good to go, usually. It can be done.

If you keep Mandrake, I'd suggest that you go to Easy Urpmi and follow the easy directions to set up an excellent download source for jut about any package you'd ever want to install.

If you want something quick and easy, Gnoppix (Gnome) or Knoppix (KDE), can load up linux without writing to hd, so you can simply pop in the CD without touching your harddrive.

Vector, I managed to sort out my networking problems with Mandrake; for some reason using the GUI to set up shares etc made no changes to the conf file. I've since edited this manually and can now share a resource on the Linux machine. This was the acid test for me, if I can share drive space with the "old" machine then I am happy investing the time in learning a new OS.

You'll no doubt hear more from me, much more!

You could also tru newly cooked gNOX (Slackware based). I really loved it

Just read your sig. Never come across the thanks button before. Better start using it!

Rudeness already!??
Difference between rudeness and being funny is difficult to comprehend

Just checked. I thought the thanks button was to thank a poster!

It is, if you think about it. By affero-ing a post, the user gets feedback in other ways...

Check out Xandros, it is easy to network with windows and even reads you local windows drives (ntfs or fat32).

Regards,
Dick