i am fed up with windows and would like to transition to linux on my desktop (first as a partition, just till i get the hang of it). i have an eMachines t3104 (yes, i know...my first mistake was buying an eMachines) here's the vitals

amd semperon 3100+ 1.8ghz w/1600mhz fsb and 256mb L2 cache
dvd/cd-rw combo 16x read 48x write
100gb ata hd (180gb usb 2.0 hd)
512mb ddr sdram
8in1 digital media card reader
5 usb
56k itu v.92 fax modem (not used)
s3 unichrome 3d video card
10/100 ethernet lan (not used)
linksys wireless pci card (used constantly )
currently running xp home

just a little more info...
i use this mainly for surfing and "sharing". it is on a wireless network thru a linksys wireless gateway (cable modem/wireless router in one) and i have a laptop also running xp home that i share files between. i have a lot of windows games and programs that i like, so compatibility with windows xp programs is a must, the computer has crashed 3 times since i bought it, and it randomly restarts, so i need a more stable os. as you most likely have realized, i am not a computer genius, by any stretch of the term, so user-friendliness and automated updates/repairing as well as good customer support are also highly desired

thank you in advance for any help you can give me!

Search for a thread like this one. It gets posted about once a day. Do your research and pick one.

Oh, and welcome to LQ

Try read here http://distrowatch.com/

It depends on what you're looking for:

Stability: Debian or its derivatives.
Security: Slackware.
Ease of use: Mandrake, Lycoris, Mandriva.
Architecture support: Yellow Dog, Fedora.

I thought Mandrake and Mandriva were the same thing...?

They all merged into one, but I'm just listing the different systems for sake of completeness.

Ah, gotcha.

Linux is the kernel. Use the latest stable one - 2.6.16.18.

Slackware is the best Linux distribution. You'll learn Linux, not some commercial junk that's so similar to Windoze; i.e., Mandrivia, Fedora, SuSE, etc.

Fire me up!!!

apologies to linux~powered for not doing a search, thanks to master for the research page, it was very helpful, and thanks to chinaman, after checking master's research page, i settled on slackware, although i'm sure i'll be searching these forums for help in no time...

I use Kanotix http://kanotix.com
It's a free linux distribution based on Debian. It is compiled for newer systems and aims at being the best in hardware recongition.
It installs on hdd from a live cd.
I think you should try it.

Try Fedora or SuSE.

For a newbie (and others as well!), those two are really good.

Myself, I started with Slackware ten years ago, and, though it might have changed since, it wasn't really easy for a beginner to install (or use).
You had to know which packages that were needed, or you'd end up with a system that was a bit unusable. It didn't really check for dependencies.
But, when you had learned that you need this and that program to be able to read man pages, and so on, it was quite nice.

And of course, you learn how to compile your kernel. :-)

I changed to Debian in '99 (I think), and haven't used Slackware since.
Not that it's bad, I just wanted to try something else.

Ubuntu--for ease of setup
Arch--to learn a lot

Seriously, pick any free distro at random and dive in.