Woohoo..Im finally turning to linux...now which distribution?

[AuraEdge]

Hey...I wanna try out linux...but theres like 10 diff dist.'s out there
Which one do i pick?
Ive started with dos several years ago and prefered it over Win 3.1 (aint I an oddball). I eventually moved up to win 95 and win 98...And the features I really like are the stuff at the bottom (taskbar, systray, quicklaunch...)
I want the most Windows like Linux...you know..kinda like one for starters.
Which one would You guys recommend to a Linux starter?

[stodge]

I would recommend Redhat 6 or Mandrake 6. THey're the easiest to install, and they both give you 2 desktop environments that look like Windows.

[AuraEdge]

Ok...I decided onRedhat
now what exactly do i download from here?
ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/linux/redhat/redhat-6.0/

do u download the whole directory or wha?

[geekd]

Assuming you have a PC (386 or better)

download everything in the i386 directory.

The other ones (Alpha and sparc) are for different hardware and processors, and SRPMS are the Source files (the code) for everything.

Then you have a few options....

If you are gonna burn it to a CD (recomended) then I would Use Mandrake Linux (I would use them anyway, since that's what I use).
Mandrake is EXACTLY the same as RedHat (they use RedHat as a base) but they tweak it out a little, and add a few bug-fixes.

Anyway, Mandrake comes as an ISO image file. This one huge file can then be burned to a CD from windows and viola! you have a free Mandrake CD!

get it here : ftp://ftp.Linuxberg.com/pub/distributions/Mandrake/ISO/

I have had problems doing a full download of RedHat6.0 and burning it. Linux is case sensetive, and when you download RedHat to Windows and then burn it, Windows throws away all the Case information, so a file called REDHAT becomes Redhat. Two completely different files to Linux...
There are ways to do it, but ISO images are So much easier..

-geekd