OT: Linux for noobs

I've got a spare box here with reasonable specs (AMD Athlon XP 2100+
1Gb RAM, 80Gb HD, ATI Radeon X1650 Pro AGP graphics board, yada yada)
just gathering dust and I fancy installing Linux on it and using it as
a dedicated Linux machine for a while to see how I get on with it on
an ongoing basis while I learn the ins and outs of it over a period of
time.

I installed Envy and it downloaded an ATI driver for it but I'm not
sure it's working all that well. I wine'd World of Warcraft yesterday
and instead of it running at 70fps it ran at about 1 frame every 4
seconds. However, this could be down to using wine. I'll see if I
can find some Oonix based 3D application later on today to see if it
does anything.

What distro am I looking for? I'd like something with a GUI to start

In no particular order:
Mepis, PClinuxOS, Ubuntu.

Live CDs can be used to have a look, before deciding what you want to
install to HD.

Ubuntu 7.04 Desktop

A) It just installed and worked... I think the most difficult questions
were "What time zone are you in?" and "See this disk.. do you want me to
just have a bit of it, or can I have the lot?"

B) I've run an earlier version on an duron 900 with no issues, and the
current version flies along on my old Athlon 1800, with 512Mb of Ram.
Just make sure you get the standard iso rather than the 64 bit or sparc,
and it should be fine.

Seconded. I've tried others and always come back to this one for ease of
install and support.

4th.

And if by some miracle you can't manage to get it to work then the
fallback would be Mandriva - but Ubuntu 7.04 is the bees knees.

I've been using it for a day or so now and it seems really good.

I prefer Agent as my newsreader, which works very well through wine.

The only problem I have is with ATI - Their non-open-source graphics
drivers aren't really aimed at Linux properly, but good on them for
actually releasing some, I suppose. I can play World of Warcraft
through wine at about 45fps whereas I'd be getting 70fps+ in Windows.
I'm happy with 45fps (but would prefer a proper framerate!) but the 2D
stuff like videos aren't all that exciting and blocky, HDTV stuff
skips frames and the desktop effects don't work properly. This is
down to ATI, not Ubuntu. I don't fancy purchasing a new graphics card
for an OS but I fear I will get bored of not being able to use my
graphics card to the full capability.

I had to buy a new graphics card recently to get my PC working properly
full stop (as well as to get it to display the BIOS screen on my new
Apple Cinema HD 23 monitor) - with my old ATI X1600 PCIX card I
couldn't restart Windows XP - I used to have to shut down the PC, power
it off and then power it back on again..

Since I've changed it for an NVIDIA card[1] all works as it should - the
BIOS screens display properly (as Nvidia actually conform to the DVI
spec unlike ATI) and I can actually reboot my PC without having to
cold-restart it..

I've never had that problem with any ATI cards I've had. BIOS has
worked fine with it too. Hmm.

I'll boot into my Ubuntu setup on the desktop sometime to jettison the
ATI drivers and install the Nvidia ones and hopefully get rid of the
little quirks that were endlessly irritating me..

Phil.

[1] Ł80 from Novatech - an 8600GT. More powerful on its own than my old
ATI crossfire setup.

Good enough for our sysadmins.

's very nice. But don't expect to get any sort of wireless networking,
working on it!
I've tried and given up looking for a driver that will work with my Dell
laptop.

No problems here - it it picked up my wireless network straight away.
Though attempts to get it to work on a machine using one of those USB
dongle wireless things was a different matter, and I ended up spending a
tenner on a wireless card. Maybe it's a Dell thing?

Which reminds me, anyone want one of these?

I know a good number of wireless cards work with Ubuntu. But being an
ex-Dell engineer we found it would either work out of the box with Ubuntu
wireless drivers or forget it unless you can find a compatible card. Same
with many other makes as well.
The cards it works with work great, pcmcia cards seemed the most successful
straight off. Also we found, that if you changed the card, Ubuntu wasn't
that bright at picking up the new card unless you went through a complete
rebuild.
I'm still trying to get my Inspiron to work with its own 1370 (IIRC) card
in.
In all Ubuntu is pretty nice.

On the other hand, I installed it on a Dell laptop and plugged in a
802.11b pcmcia card (TrendNet was the brand I think) and it worked out
of the box with no further updates/download.

Aye, ubuntu picked up the Intel ABG Mini PCI Wireless Card in my Asus M5N
lapdog without any hassle.

I started it downloading before I went shopping and am burning it to a
CDR now.

Works with my Broadcom card once I point it at the non free firmware files
that you can extract from the Windows dll. It also worked well with an
Atheros card in my old laptop.

off with to get used to and a decent sized online knowledge base that
I can refer to in the first few weeks. I assume that covers most
distributions these days so it's hard to pick which one, and I'm not
really sure which will support the majority of my hardware on that
machine.

I might go shopping and pick up a copy of Linux Format (if it still
exists) it to see which distro is living on the cover disc.

steroids. Has all the non-open-source stuff that ubuntu eschews and
you're going to add later anyway (flash, real, acrobat etc.) PLUS has an
absolutely brilliant start-menu and control-panel that ubuntu lacks.
Seriously, Mint rocks. The only (potential) problem will be the ATI
graphics card, but that's the same with any distro: ATI aren't as
linux-fiendly as NVidia, but if it's an old one then you'll probably be OK.