[tuxfan]

The first thing that you need to decide on is the distro and version. Die hard GNU fans will tell you to use Debian. Its a good distro, with lots of online help.

There are others who will tell you to use Red Hat (Fedora), Mandrake and SuSE. I think Digit carried some comparison article sometime back. Although it wasn't entirely accurate or upto the mark, you can refer it for some basic idea.

I would recommend you start with Knoppix or Gnoppix. Both are live distros and you don't need to install anything. Just boot from the CD. Switch off the machine and its out. That will give you some idea of how Linux is. I have Knoppix 3.6 and Gnoppix 0.8. So contact me if you need them.

As regards installation, I would recommend some distro based on Red Hat/Fedora. I use PCQ Linux (based on Fedora Core 1). The main reason for choosing Red Hat based distro is that you will find maximum number of books specifically written for it. So you don't need to rely only on on-line resources. Self learning is that bit easier.

After you select a distro, you need to partition and then install. But that comes secondary. First decide on a distro.