I am a complete newcomer to Linux and would like to learn by installing some distribution on an old 486 I have. It has 40Mb RAM, 1.5Gb hard disk, an Adaptec 294x SCSI card (used by the hard disk) and an Orchid Fahrenheit 64 display adapter.
Are there any recommendations for a good distribution to get started out with for this hardware, and my relative lack of experience with Linux?
Thanks!

maybe slackware ???
on that machine, i doubt you are going to get a graphical user interface running..
so u will prob miss out on alot of cool linux stuff.

IMO VectorLinux would be a very good choice

I'm afraid that the answer is no. Vector Linux (at least VL4), as Demonbane mentioned, is better suited for a Pentium class machine. Besides it's not very friendly to newbies.

For 486 machines I think that DeLi is the way to go:
http://delilinux.berlios.de
I haven't tried it myself, but generally I think that the older your machine, the more manual work to get everything up and running.

For a complete newbie I would much rather recommend that you get a Pentium II with 64 or even better 128MB memory and at least 10GB HDD. Then you could install one of the mainstream distributions without any hassle. These machines are getting pretty cheap now, if you can get one.

Sorry to bring bad news. Good luck with your Linux project!
Martin

Smalllinux is a fun little distro on two floppys that can also be put on the
hd. It is command line but you can learn a lot without worrying about
losing anything valuable when you re-install, because you WILL mess up
and have to redo things. That's part of the learning process and part of
the fun. You can find distro specific info in a support group at yahoo.
Have fun!