I've entered the world of Linux but, somehow, never really got into it.

I've tried RedHat9, FedoraCORE and Mandrake but I never really got my computer the way I wantted it to be.

Is it the drivers? Is it the programs? Is it me?
(never got my ATI 9600 256Mb running well)

Well, the real question is: with Linux distro would you say it's better for starters?

By the way: I want XMMS, a nice internet browser, a simple e-mail manager and, if possible, WineX working for Civ3 and MOHAA

the dirstro's you have tried are generally rh best for newbs..

but if you want linux the way that YOU want it... then you need a more customisable Distro....
maybe slackware..

if you REEEALY want it customised, then its gotta be LFS or Gentoo !

I looked at several distros recently just to see what was going on with them. This is my quick reaction:

Fedora Core 2: best installer, good setup, good administration tools.

Mandrake 10: good installer, lots of extra tools supplied, seems kind of cluttered.

SuSE: good installer, nice, clean environment, reasonable set of tools.

If I had to choose one it would probably be SuSE, but that's just my own taste. Really any of them would be a fine place to start. The thing about linux is that you can change everything about how it looks and acts to suit your own tastes, so which distro you start with isn't really that important. All three that I mentioned have good update tools now (although the FC2 default configuration for up2date is a bit problematic; Install synaptic and use it instead and you'd be fine.)

I use Gentoo for my day-to-day desktop. I really do think it's the best distro out there right now, but it's not for newbies unless you're brave and have plenty of time and patience.

The ATI driver will be a problem with all distros - it's ATI at fault there...

Well to the best of my knowledge, no distro has cedega(the new name for winex) installed because it isnt free. And if you do buy it, its very simple to get working. Usualy for starter installs, i suggest mandrake because of its nice gui. xmms is simple to install alslo. IMHO, the best internet brouser is Firefox and a nice email manger is Thunderbird or the KDE included Kmail. for your ati vid, just make sure you have X configured corectly, though from what ive understood, ATI has never been easy to setup.

Wine is Free... and has decent support for OpenGL games Like Half-Life / CounterStrike and simpol win32 programs.

yes, wine is free, but winex is not, ive always prefered crossover anyway

I'm just a little "far" from installing Gentoo because I got scared of the instalation guides that seem to be a little too "pro" for me.

As for the ATI drivers, I got a XFree conflict in the Mandrake 10 distro..

The Gentoo install guides are *really* good - just make sure you read everything and do exactly what it says to do and you should be fine.

The Gentoo forums are also an outstanding resource (http://forums.gentoo.org/). If you go the Gentoo route you'll learn a lot more about linux than you will just installing one of those other distros, but it will take more work on your part, and a fairly large committment to keep learning.

Ditto

Personally I would say try Suse Linux 9.1, you can download the image to burn to cd from their website although be prepared for the 700 mb download. It comes with XMMS and Firefox which IMO is the best browser, I use it on windows. Also I don't know about WineX, but wine works with gens the genesis/megadrive emulator. It is the first linux I have used and is fantastic and easy to install