Begining Linux?

[BlueCamaro]

OK, here goes my first post:

I'm right in the middle of taking my first IT class at college and just recently have been talking about Linux. We won't go in depth about Linux now but I would like a head start when we do in future semesters. So here are my questions.

What are the minimum requirements for installation?
My current comp (which i will replace this semester, own build hopefuly) is an old 500Mhz P3 with 384MB SDRAM and two HD's one 12 GB and the other 120 GB, would like to have that computer to learn on.

What are the best versions of Linux for a beginner to learn?

What are some good books about the Linux OS?

Thanks

[Xayd]

An old machine is actually better, since all of the hardware will have drivers included with just about any distro, it should work fine out of the box.

I prefer Debian, personally, since it's more *BSD like (which I prefer over Linux overall but with game servers the BSDs are rarely supported natively).

I dunno about books, online documentation is plenty if you don't mind searching on google for answers to your problems.

[LocoCoyote]

If you are a Windows person, I recommend SuSE, Mandrake, or redhat (fendora..whatever). After you start getting comfortable go to freeBSD.

[bigandy]

Knoppix is a good one if you want to first test out Linux since it does not require installation, but just runs right off of the CD.

I like Mandrake. It's the only distro that I've really played around with for any period of time. It's pretty easy to get used to, especially if you are used to windows.

LinuxISO is a good place to get the disrtos for free. If you are looking for books, check out a book store that has a "Computers" section, and hopefully a Linux section as well. Check to see if they have any books on a particular distro, and try to get one with the CD(s) included. Barnes And Noble (at least the one around here) has a fair selection.

[RHLinuxGUY]

My first distro i've tried was Redhat 9 its the MOST stabel distro i've tried so far is RedHat. Debian is like slackware, difficult, but it won't hog ur system resources (I've seen a bit of a difference not much a person that just uses a word processor would notice, more like gaming) I would recomend the "Red Hat Linux 9 Bible" by Christopher Negus, that book is awsome! it gets u from point A < to point > B! The only thing i didn't like about Red Hat 9 was that the kernel is a piece of ****. Ok i exagerated but thers something about that is not liked by Transgaming(makers of WineX) and Radeon based cards, so I had to go with Mandrake, and which u should go to if ur not an AVID GAMER like me. though it had an older kernel by just 2 small versions (2.4.20 Red Hat, 2.4.18 MDK) its supports WineX. So i would go with either Red Hat (Fedora Core 1 seems to be the newest) and/or MDK (mandrake).

[JTH]

Originally posted by bigandy Knoppix is a good one if you want to first test out Linux since it does not require installation, but just runs right off of the CD.

You can also get the Live Evaluation ("live eval") version of SuSe, which does the same thing.