Brief history (linux nrewbie)
Started with RH9, SB live mostly inoperative, no DVD, flash rom not perfect
Tried Jamd, same results (based on RH9, no surprise there)
Tried Debian, didn't understand all the questions, couldn'y install
Tried Knoppix, same result as RH9 with SB live and DVD, but no flash rom at all
Tried to install Gentoo, it didn't like me, mostly no such directory messages
Installed MDK, best result so far, :-)
SB live worked (with some playing with KDE mixer), DVD works some, often plays a DVD even tho it tells me it has crashed. Only plays some of my DVDs tho. It likes Alison Kraus but not Rod Stewart :-(
I reinstalled MDK with Gnome as the default desktop, and SB wouldn't work.
Reinstalled again with KDE as desktop, SB works. I don't undestand.
Flash rom, now here it is different, if I put the flash rom in the usb port before I startup, it detects the device and wants to run a config program, BUT, the config program says that there are overlapping blocks in the region of 5gig, my flash rom is only 128Meg so it can't be talking about the flash rom. I opted out of the config program real quick. This situation occured on all three installs.

My system, AMD Athlon(tm) XP 2400+
SB live platinum, Gforce4, MX440 video
512Ram, DDR
Dual boot, Win XP on hda1
40 gig drive split in two, formatted fat32, hdb1, hdb2
hdc1 is cd rom
MDK on hdd1 (another 40 gig drive)

Will I be able to use my flash rom.?
Is there a distro better suited to the equipment I have.?