As to mandrake, i've never tried it. I've heard some good things about it,
some bad, but generally i've heard its installation is faultless, and it has
very very good hardware support. Suse 8 pro apparently has very good
hardware support as well. Note the sarcasm on the apparently ;-) George,
maybe try Redhat 8, use that for 6 months, get a basic grounding in Linux
then come join us at Debian again. The user lists that Debian has are so
far in advance of technical offerings that Suse, Redhat can (and ever will)
offer it isn't funny. Debian (as already said by Nate) isn't really a
distribution for a Linux newbie but i'd recommend it as simply the best
Linux distribution bar none (although Slackware is a close 2nd imho).
Wow, that's it for me...4 rants so far this month (and I promised only one
lol)...