Knoppix is a great "n00b" distro. It has a huge amount packed into one directly bootable CD (with amazing hardware support too). All you do to install it to the hard drive is go into the root terminal and type "knoppix-installer". Then use the appropriate option to configure it for partitions, etc. Part of what makes it good is its Application Grabber. It's very easy to appreciate that.
(what other distros have that, by the way).
On the other hand, I've heard excellent things about both Mandrake and Redhat. I can't exactly say that I've had experience with Mandrake 9 (had a problem with my laptop's graphics processor) but I did like what I saw of its installer :laughing: Redhat is nice because it comes with so many packages that you can really just install it and have a very functional system. (very good idea to choose "custom" so you can install the programs that you want...if you do so, and you have room on your hard drive and want to experiment...get X Desktop, KDE, AND Gnome). I can't exactly testify whether Mandrake has packages to a similar extent or not.
By the way, petogaz, that avatar is amazing.
RED HAT or MANDRAKE? What is good for a n00bi 
Linear Mode
