I was just wondering what I should do to set up my new system...

I have heard that mandrake is easiest to set up-- I'm pretty limited on my knowledge OS's and how they work. I've VB 6 and I'm now learning JAVA. Will I be pulling my hair out when I set it up. Also, my wife wants to be able to use win98 so I thought about buying one o' them selectors that allows you to use two or three HDD independently on boot-- they don't know each other at all....(the drives probably don't even say hello to each other in the cases hallways....so sad) But anyways....do you guys have any thoughts...remember I'm a little new to Linux and to programming, I'm a sophmore student in college. I'm building the system w/ a P4 1.6 or so maybe an Asus board... I have so many unanswered questions....hey, I appreciate your endurance in reading this message, I'm a little long winded.

yeah, mandrake is really easy to install and get going, while staying on teh side of a *real* linux distro [cue rpm haters...] have i go. i use it, it's quick and easy. as for dual booting, linux will do all of that for you, just say yes at the right point during your installation.

Yep, I would reckon that Mandy is the easiest to setup - apparently SuSe is not far off, but I've never used it so I can't possibly comment.

Will you be pulling your hair out? Depends on if you follow instructions or not. The Mandy install gives you the option of 'Expert' or something else - always, always always go for the expert install. You may not consider yourself an expert, and you definitely won't be by the time you've installed, but it's really not hard. Everything has documentation (to some extent) on screen, so as long as you read everything available to you, you shouldn't go to wrong. It sounds like you're building your own machine? This helps tremendously because you already know what's in your machine.

Buy one of those harddisk selectors? Why? Mandrake (like all other Linux distros) comes with something called Lilo. This is more than adequate to simply select which OS to boot. Windows, by the way, cannot see the Linux disks (or partitions), so there's no problems there.

Hope this helps. Good luck, and remember to come back here with any questions.

Yeah, I have installed about 30 different linux-distros to different computers in past 6 mounths- more or less just to check them out - older ones also.

Mandrake 8.1 (and of course the new one) is really much easier to setup than any other system, say Windows or linux. What makes it quite great is, that it also works quite well, has a lot new and operetable aplications - and last but not least its "prettiest" or "the most fancy-looking distro" I've seen in opensourceworld - It almoust beat MacOs with looks (windows have always been ugly unworkable guis). And when you try to get new users for GNU/linux - Mandrake may be the way. If you are looking for stability and power for say programming - I recommend to learn how to compile debian to your desktop-mascine (or try Libranet also Debian-based). It's solid, it's like a philosophy. SuSE Distros are good-ones, expecially for serveruse, but SuSE has too much "features" of it's own. Don't start with SuSE professional (I did)

If something to ask about distros write pekka@lavento.com

I do confirm!
Mandrake is dead easy to install, and you don't nead a switch or anything, you just reboot the PC and choose which system you want to use. One thing, if your Asus board is an ISDN board it might not be recognised (or recognised but it might not work) because Asuscom boards are made with 3 different chips, and not always detected, BUT all in the list proposed during the installation.
Best luck and welcome to linux

hey thanks everyone-- if you have any more suggestions let me know.

If I buy just the $15 CD's from Mandrake (8.1) do I get any documentation (like a book or anything) or is it all on screen help? I'm trying to remember my other questions.....

no, you won't get any manuals, you gotta pay for that. i'd get mandrake 8.2 tho, and also to get it from somewhere else like linux123 or something, you'll get cdr's of it much cheaper