I realise that there are hundreds of different flavours of linux, and deciding which one can be a nightmare. I personally hate Ubuntu which alot of people will love, personall i would go for Fedora. If you wanna read about most of the distros available goto Distrowatch as it will tell you about most available. This site is one of the ultimate resources on disrtos. The main ones to try as a newbie are Meppis (don't have to install - run as a live CD and install if you want from the same CD) Ubuntu (These will send you the CD's free of charge just wait for about a month) Fedora - 4CD download which takes a while but has a lot of stuff including drivers included Suse (not totally free - i think it is just the live cd which is free) Madriva (mandrake as it used to be know) again 4 cd download but alot of drivers I would advise newbies to steer clear of most others until they know what there doing and then experiment until you find the system you love Linux will let you customise EVERYTHING unlike windows which let you do nothing. Be prepaired for some larning with Linux and to reinstall it a few times when you *BLEEP* up