which distro

void

void

void

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i want to start to use a linux distrobution, for learning a bit of unix and just basically messing around, finding alternatives to windows.

i want to install it on a pentium 3 destop lying around, with 256 mb ram. which distrobution would you recomend i get. i have little experience with any linux based os'es, but i would consider myself to be quite experienced with windows and general hardware. any ideas?
 
Try Xubuntu. It's the very popular Ubuntu distribution with the Xfce lightweight desktop environment. If Xfce isn't your cup of tea, try regular old Ubuntu. I ran it on a Celeron 750 with 256 MiB RAM for quite some time and I was very pleased with it.

The Ubuntu siblings have excellent support and are reccomended to both experienced users and wet-nosed noobs like myself.

EDIT: have some screenshots http://shots.osdir.com/slideshows/slideshow.php?release=660&slide=4

If the look of the desktop is not up to your tastes remember that Linux desktop environments are highly configurable.
 
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You could try puppy linux just to get the feel of it
Puppy will easily install to USB, Zip or hard drive media.
Booting from CD, Puppy will load totally into RAM so that the CD drive is then free for other purposes.
Booting from CD, Puppy can save everything back to the CD, no need for a hard drive.
Booting from USB, Puppy will greatly minimise writes, to extend the life of Flash devices indefinitely.
Puppy will be extremely friendly for Linux newbies.
Puppy will boot up and run extraordinarily fast.
Puppy will have all the applications needed for daily use.
Puppy will just work, no hassles.
Puppy will breathe new life into old PCs
Click to expand...
These are extraordinary goals, yet Puppy achieves them all. Obviously, some objectives have qualifications, for example, to load totally into RAM the PC must have either 128M RAM or failing that a swap partition. Also, the "will just work, no hassles" objective is a work-in-progress! One thing to be very much aware of is that Puppy is incredibly small. After all, to load totally into RAM and run from there, Puppy has to be small. The live-CD is about 50-70M, yet "every" application you need is there -- I'm quite serious -- it doesn't seem possible but it is. Furthermore, as everything runs in RAM, there are no delays and the speed is nothing short of astounding.
Click to expand...
Ive been trying loads of live cd's and this one is great fun and so fast works on old compaq laptop my 6 year old girl been using all morning playing the games and tux paint
 
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