| I have been using Linux since I discovered it in 1998. I found a book in a local book store called SAMS Teach yourself linux in 24 hours. I was currently going to a Vocational school for electronics at the time and computers had been a hobby of mine since the commodore 64. I got my first PC in ( it has been so long I can't remember the date) with dos 3.3 on it. Growing with computers and the command line Linux to me was as natural as walking. Now in 98 they didn't have all the fancy installs like the new fedora or Mandrake installs.. it was all text and no mouse. I used RedHat from about version 7.0-9.0. Now I use Gentoo. A gentoo install isn't for the beginner unless you love to learn. If you just want to try out Linux I recommend Knoppix to poke around in. Or maybe RedHat 9 maybe even fedora core 1. (not 2 have read too many bad things about 2) Gentoo Linux has a really great... really nice laied out website. They have great online docs that will walk you through step by step an installtion or configuration. And Their fourms are full of great people that will usually help you figure out almost any problem in a day or 2. The thing I really like best about Gentoo is what they call the portage tree. It is basicly how you install programs. And I can't find many programs they don't have in the portage tree. The portage tree also installs all dependencies that your program needs to be installed. Kind of like in the Windows world needing directX 9 to play a game but not having directX 9 after the game is installed... Portage will go get it for ya and install it. Gentoo is also great about security patching and keeping up-to-date. In fact the only downside I can think of (which is also a plus in the log run) is the amout of time it takes to install gentoo. See Gentoo installes from what they call source code. That is the code that the coders see as they are writing programs. The bad thing is how long it takes to complie all the stuff you need to install. The up side is that the code will be optimized for your computer when it is done. So you can get the maxium speed out of your newly installed Operating System. give it a try if you want to really learn about linux. http://www.gentoo.org | 