Help me break my winDoze

[DigitalSuicide]

O.k. im totaly new at linux, I've used it only a few times [about 2 days worth of playing with PhatLinux 3.3, to see what its like]

Im sick of windoze and not knowing how my computer runs, not knowing why i just got 5 errors not even a second after ive started up.

Ive been reading over a lot of sites and fourms about what linux is good to start with for a newbie. Most of them say Redhat. What is your thoughts?

I realized that if i really wanna learn it i have to get some documentation on it. So at a recent computer show i was able to find [probly one of the only linux books they had there] LINUX Decktop Starter Kit [i notice its in your bookshelf or "Books-to-read" section] but its kinda lacking of the instalation process. [Maby im just dumb]

So any way...what linux should i use.. :confused: i curently have on discs
redhat ?.?, open cladera2.3[for some reason the book only came with these two tho it was said to have turbo linux and suse..?], phat linux, turbo linux workstation 4.0 lite, and linux mandrake 6.0. Out of these distros which should i use[ill probly go with red hat cause the book is more focused around it]

I want to learn every thing about linux, dedicate my life to linux, learn to program linux, and what not. Help me do this.

Oh and please dont flame me to bad when i ask dumb questions, im new at this..

[Domin]

Mandrake is DEFINITLY the easiest. It's much easier, yet loosely based on, Red Hat. It has a simple installer (7.0 anyway) and comes packed with a lot of good software and stuff. It also comes with some good config tools and I reccomend it to all newbies.

[Red Hat]

The first distro I ever tried was Slackware about 6-7 years ago. I found it hard to use & understand as a newbie. I then used Red Hat, and it worked for me as a newbie. I still use Red Hat (tell by my nick).
I tried Mandrake once, and didn't like it very much.

You'll get decent support whether you use Mandrake or Red Hat.
Use Mandrake, because most people recommend newbies to use it.

Good luck :)
Come back here and post any more questions if you need to!

[prince_kenshi]

I would suggest either Mandrake or Red Hat as well. They're similar enough that I think the book would cover both of them pretty similarly. But soon afterwards, after you get a feel for what Linux is all about, I suggest switching to a more hardcore distro like Debian. Those easy distros will spoil you almost as bad as Windows. I think I learned more in the first week that I had Debian than anything else before. But at least get a feel for it first with one of the distros you have so it won't scare you initially. You can't dive into the shallow end but it's not safe to go to the deep end if you don't know how to swim.

[bdg1983]

I have the same book from my book club. Since all the distros you mentioned are a little old now, I would suggest either you d/l a more recent distro (especially if your hardware is fairly new) or try OpenLinux 2.3 as it's installer (Lizard) is quite good and most hardware should be detected during the install. At least that's what I found when I used 2.3. Use eDesktop 2.4 now.

[Marcel2008]

Windows is a piece of crap.
I left it on for a night to download red hat 7.1, the next morning the kernel crashed, internet explorer crashed, and i had to reset windows.
Memory leaks all over the place.
Next time i'll download it from a linux box.