Still sounds a little like redhat - erm, just as an aside, I'd still get my arse down to the local computer store to try and get at least one of the named distro's.

Because a couple of month's ago, there was some security related stuff that said about up dating the kernel to anything post 2.4.23, because earlier ones had some holes.

You could try looking at the security stuff here at LQ, I understand that "Unspawn" does one hell of a job at keep LQ up to date with security related matters in the weekly report on the LQ front page.

regards

John

thanks bigjohn....

Usually when booting up it will say what distro (I.E booting Redhat linux) or you will have a fancy splash screen (Like SuSE).
Many Distros will display their name at a login prompt. (Debian)
If you are using a version 6 of Redhat, SuSE, or mandrake I would recommend getting ahold of a newer release. Redhat has dropped all support of its dot releases though (9.x is the last and from now on will only provide enterprise versions). I reccomend SuSE for ease of use.
If your ISP only gives you one IP address and you don't have a router (vs a hub) you will need to get one or set up one of your machines as a router with DHCP enabled (Windows does this with its internet connection sharing but it does not play nice with Linux)