hey have you tried using yast2... i am not at my linux machine (winXP working beautifully) but i recall there is a setup there and maybe you could browse for it from a cd (that you put the driver on)...

I would recommend RedHat 9 but it is no longer supported by RedHat Inc. Fedora is the current replacement so you may want to try that. Mandrake is also very easy to use. Most other Linux flavors do not install as easily as these and would have a steeper learning curve.

Like most of the others, I would recommend a "newbie-friendly" distro first. I started out with RedHat 7.3 and moved up to 9, then tried Fedora Core 1. I then tried something a bit more difficult and installed Gentoo 1.4, but I couldn't get X to work on my laptop, so now I'm using SUSE 9 Pro. Gentoo was a bit frustrating for me, but did help me understand linux better. SUSE 9.0 seems to be great on my laptop (dual boot win2k for work). Anyway, the installs for RH9 and FC1 are very easy and almost identical to each other. SUSE is a little different, but very easy to install also. Just my 2 cents though since I'm still a newbie myself. Anyway, don't give up, and welcome to the fold.

What's not been mentioned is that Fedora is actually Red Hat 10 - Red Hat is now the name for the commercial boxed distribution and Fedora the free one.

lol its true mandrake is by far childs play
but i was intrested to learn that fedora core 2 is comming out in april
why so soon?

Fedora core 2 is coming out in april?
Gosh, I should have waited for it.
anyway, i am having the same problem, to choose between Mandrade 9.2 and fedora core.
im using red hat 9 now and i have all the downloaded softwares written on to CD (save me downloading them again), i am wondering if i could use these programs for both Mandrake and fedora? they are all tarball files.