Well, first of all I have no experience in programming. I know some knowledge about Html & Adobe photoshop and that is about it to start things out. I recently have been told on many occasions a good way to start of learning programming is through linux. I've asked a reccomendation for an Linux OS.. I get a million different responses.

What I need linux for
-Start learning programming
-Start trying to write patches
-Learn how to make it more secure

Here is some things though. I dont really need the newbiest-friendly version of linux. I doubt I would learn much... Thats kinda why im switching from "Newb" friendly windows ..

Also somebody reccomended Red Hat 10 Enterprise. Correct me if im wrong, but isnt Red Hat mainly for just business they need to handle tons of clients?

Well, thanks.. And if you could possibly add my msn @ support@cyclone-hosting.com I would appreciate it so much.

well, if you want the distro that will teach you the most, and don't necessarily need the "newbie friendly" distro, then i'd say go for slackware. you have to do almost all configuration on your own and the installation gives people more grief than others (simply because it isn't as automated as fedora/redhat/mandrake, etc). but i installed it without a problem, and you get a very powerful distro that by default is operated at the command prompt rather than gui. (though it should be mentioned that you can run any distro this way, just as you can run slack from a gui)

you were told correctly that linux is an excellent os to learn programming.

hope this helps, and welcome to the linux community.

i am currently using fedora core 1, and have found it to be a very nice distro. it is more automated than slack, but still gives you all the tools that you could need for programming, just check out and install the development packages that you need.