Depends what you are interested in, but learning OpenGL wouldn't be a bad start if you want to do 3D programming. Check out the NeHe tutorials on the net, they are excellent.

I've heard that's a good place to start, butI don't know anything about it. Do you need any special hardware or software for it? Is there prerequisite programming knowledge that you have to have? (My last programming was in BASIC and PASCAL, if that gives you any indication of how long I've been out of this.)

Some of my main questions revolve around client/network distributions of 3D solutions - which I know *nothing* about. I really need to start totally from scratch so that I know what hardware I would need, or how to determine what hardware I would need, what software and/or programming expertise, that sort of thing.

Thanks for the answers!

Sadie

I might be a little late this, but Mandrake 8.2 supports Nvida cards. I have a 420mx (GeForce 4) and got X to work right off the bat. I installed it at work on my laptop (don't tell my boss) and X worked right off the bat. It has a Geforce 3 card. I noticed that the generic GeForce drives that come with X will work for 3 and 4 cards. If you want a fast and stable distro try Slackware. It is kinda a @)&%^@$& to install for a newbie. Also I have a dual boot system with XP and Slackware and Mandrake and they both worked great.