Yet Another Recommendation Request: Noob, user not server, just to fool around... 164

On Fri, 13 Jan 2006 20:55:02 -0500, (PeteCresswell)

Since you've augmented RAM (I was able to find 512mb SODIMM for mine at BestBuy for $50), most any modern distro will perform admirably. By 1.1 ghz Athlon, do you mean one that really runs at 1.1 or one that is rated as 1.1 in Pentium equivalence? Big difference.

www.distrowatch.com will give you the lowdown on what's what with Linux distros. Again, most any recent distro will do what you want - a caveat is that ntfs writing is not terribly robust at this point - best option in that regard seems to be the 'captive' driver from www.jankratochvil.net.

I'd recommend: 1) a good live CD - just to check that everything works without major issues. Knoppix is the one by which others are judged. Elive is another good one - gives you a shot at an alternative desktop - enlightenment. 2) buttuming your hard disk is a reasonable size, you could install several distros - I usually allot about 10gb per distro plus one 1gb swap parbreastion.

If you want a 'familiar' desktop, you're not going to be too distraught with KDE - it's similar enough to MS that the transition won't hurt. Other desktop options include Gnome and XFCE - install them when you install the distro and you should be able to select your choice when you log in.