New to linux need advice

Well I am very new to linux (Just got it running yesterday), I have two old machines I'm using as my linux learning boxes a decently equiped p200 and a Gateway p133. My 200mhz is running redhat now with no real problems it was a custom built system asus mb, 196mb ram, etc. So it has nice parts for it's era and everything seems to run fine on it. The Gateway was given to me by a friend that knew I tinkered on computers and it's a pain in the rear. I can't get redhat to run at all I can run the install program (wouldn't autorun from cd but I poked around and figured out I needed to and how to make a boot floppy) but when it gets ready to install it goes to a error screen. However Knoppix's runs on it fine I believe it has proprietary ram (has about 40mb's) so not sure if I can upgrade it, but with a swap file Knoppix's runs with the full gui. After reading the FAQ I'm thinking of installing Knoppix's to the Hard Drive however my question is will all the software remain compressed even after transfer to HD (I'm really sure it will) and I'll only benefit from the faster transfer rate of the data from the HD as compared to from the cd. Ideally I would like to find a version of linux with a gui that will run nicely on such a old underpowered system. I just downloaded Mandrake 9.0 i586 and might mess around with it some on the 200 machine but, I was abit confused as to what version to get to try and put on the 133 but atleast for now Knoppix's runs on it with no trouble.

Jwilds

On your p-133 as far as doing a hd install, if you use the knx-hdinstall program it will do a full "debian" install from your compressed knoppix file system, which is like a normal linux install, and uses about 2.3GB of hd space. However you could just copy the knoppix directory from a cd and put it on your hd and then boot it with a floppy (you also can get lilo working). The one problem with having the compressed image on a hd partition is that you won't be able to write to that partition at all.

for info on using the compressed image on a hd search this forum and look in the FAQ.

As far as which distro to run as a normal hd install, I played with every distro I could get my hands on for years, today if I needed to use RedHat to be able to run a particular application I would (in the past I would force it to work, even partially in slackware), my two personal distro preferences are Libranet (debian based) and Slackware I like the way they work, Slackware is by far the easiest to manually configure, customize and change. Libranet has an easy text based install, and because it (like Knoppix) is built from debian, it has the best package management system. Rpm based systems such as: Mandrake RedHat and SuSE at one time were compatible with each other but now are pretty much totally separate entities, ie. packages are not compatible with each other. With debian based sytems a stable (woody) distro no matter who built it should be able to run any package from the debian stable package repository, a testing or unstable distro the same (there is an exception or two, Lindows?).

Ask yourself these questions:
(1) which distro will run on your hardware (in the past I've had hardware that wouldn't run some distro's, so I used what worked)?
(2) which distro(s) fullfill your needs as far as applications etc.?
(3) which distro do you want to use and learn how to configure, customize, etc?

rock

You forgot (4) Which one's are free :P but thanks a ton for the info. I'll be downloading a few different free OS's (downloading Libranet as I type this) and find one that runs the best on the old Gateway. Basically for it I just want something that can browse the web check email and has some word processing software.

Jwilds