FINDING A GOOD LINUX ?????? I'm Bad at that HELP ME OUT!

Good Compatible linux programs.................Anyone know any that are small and don't take too much HDD space i have a 40 GB secondary slave HDD i want to put it on to play with.

my master 300GB HDD is running windows XP. So i need something that doesn't come into conflict with that and will run using almost any hardware.

I've had trouble with linux OS X and mandrake on this pc are there any others?

I NEED SOMETHING ALMOST UNIVERSALLY COMPATIBLE WITH ANY HARDWARE because I don't want to install patches or change my hardware.

I would also like to point out I know nothing of Linux as I've barely used it EVER. I'm a windows guy

HELP ME PLEASE!

also if you've got any good websites explaining the differences in Linux out in simpletons terms I would appreciate it.

Anyone?

distrowatch.com is a good site to find Linux os. I am extremely partial to Fedora Core as it is my desktop of choice. I have had zero problems with hardware compatibility. When dual booting Linux you are going to use GRUB to switch between Linux and Microsoft. *GRUB is a boot loader, as a matter of fact when installing FC6, the installer will recognize your NTFS partition and add it to the boot loader.
Coming from Microsoft, you will more than likely be frustrated with the different directory structure and the lack of a button that says “start” but once you are proficient with a shell you will never look back!

Good Luck.

You can go for Suse 9.1 version (Latest version has some problem)!!
its almost like windows...!!i have never find problems with this!! those who havn't tried this can use it for test...i am sure you can't ignore after using this!!





best regards,
ashok

im ok with the shell ive seen it b4 been exposed to it but yeah it is a bit of a pain at first thanks for the site ill check it out


Now will teh grub have any trouble with my HDD? i have Win xp on my 300 GB drive and my other drives are ntfs with the 300

but i want to put linux on my 40 GB secondary slave to use as a back up

will the grub be able to handle that? Because ive always had trouble with the grubs messing up somehow.

that site was good but got any site that can tell me like compatibility and reliability

Also where can i get LINUX for FREE? Since im just playing with it i don't really wanna pay for it.