Well im convinced and now i want linux up and running quite bad.

The only thing i am not quite sure of is the best distro/desktop combination for my IBM laptop in terms of useablity, speed and compatibility.

I am currently running XP pro on an IBM thinkpad r31, 386MB, 1,5Ghz celeron (which is not that slow at all!) . Im not a total nitwit when it comes to computers but I don't to spend all my free time in order to play a mp3 file on my system. I use mail, internet, office, palm sync and wifi software. Finally I must note I really appriaciate smooth and sleek operating systems, like OS X on apple (which I use at home).

So what's the best combo? I was thinking: Red hat with Gnome or Suse with KDT or Ximian. what's your take? which combination is fastest/user friendly Many thanks in advance!

try Mandrake

If you have enough HD space for the full Install, I would suggest Fedora. They are coming out with a core 2 beta, which hopefully should be better than core 1, but besides that, Fedora Core 1 is a pretty stable system.

and its free.

Concur with the Mandrake suggestion.

everyone has their own opinion, personally, I started with SuSE, and the setup was easy, configuration was easy, and it has good documentation.

--Just my $0.02 worth

I've only used Redhat 7.3 - 9. Based on my experience I recommend Redhat 9

Best is probably new Suse.

I'd jump in at the deep end and try Slackware for the reasons in this thread. I started with Red Hat but since I switched to Slack a few months ago I have learnt twice as much about Linux as I ever did in my year with Red Hat.

Jon