I use Ubuntu right now. It has the best support forums and frequent updates, and is the best distro I've used over the years despite some glaring bugs.

The most common apps I use are Firefox, gedit, Audacious, the shell, Brasero, VMWare (for testing Exchange setups in Windows), AbiWord, GIMP, Asunder, VLC and Pidgin.

I started out on Red Hat 5.0 (not RHEL) in the late 90s. Used it full-time for about a year, then switched to BeOS and dual-booting that with Windows. Over the years, I've also used Caldera, Corel Linux, Mandrake (before it was Mandriva), SUSE and some others I am sure I'm forgetting.

My desktop is Gnome, though it's not nearly as customizable as I'd like (used to be, though, before the developers removed it all). I don't care for KDE that much, though.

I'm going to try Fedora Core 11 when it comes out, but will probably stick with Ubuntu, I'm guessing.

Thanks. I've switched plenty of distros (like most Linux users I guess). For now, I'm sticking with Debian. I find it quite fast and lean with xfce.

One thing that's frustrated me in the past is that after having been a Windows users for years, I suddenly tried completely switching to Linux without knowing much about the commands and file structure.

I still struggle with app updates and dependencies but I'm trying to switch slowly, one task at a time from XP to Debian.

Do you recommend any books or good manuals? I know I can find loads if I just google it, but that's also been my problem. There's way too much info and it's too annoying to look for one tiny thing in that mass of text.

Thanks for your help.

Yeah, I think every Linux user switches distros over the years to find one that suits them best. It's always interesting (to me) to hear what path others have trod along the way.

I was lucky in that my girlfriend was much more deeply into Linux than I was when I decided to get rid of Windows altogether almost two years ago now. She was a big help. If I didn't know something, I'd just ask her. Unfortunately, I can't offer my girlfriend as a resource. ;-)

Even though I consider myself a geek (and you sound like you are as well), this book, Ubuntu for Non-Geeks, helped me out:

http://www.amazon.com/Ubuntu-Linux-Non-Geeks-Project-Based-G...

Since you're using Debian, a lot of that will apply, too.

I also just read a whole lot of man pages and used the great Ubuntu Guide site:

http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/Ubuntu:Intrepid

And I used the Linux command reference PDF here:

http://fosswire.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/fwunixref.pdf

And of course a lot of Googling.

It does bother me that Ubuntu is coming to mean "Linux" to a lot of people, but it is a good distro.

What do you like about xfce? Never tried it myself.

Thanks, those links look great.

You're lucky with the gf mate. Mine just keeps asking me, "What are these secret clever things you keep doing with the computer?"

The reason I want to move away from Windows is to learn more about how Linux works and use it to do more fun things. I've used Ubuntu a few times and I liked it. But I find because it's deliberately aimed at non-geeks, it has too much fluff.

And that's why I like xfce. It's a really minimal, simple desktop - less distraction for me. You should try it.

And "minimal" here doesn't mean something necessarily aimed at power users like fluxbox, ratpoison or awesome.

I've always thought of xfce as a sort of gnome-lite-- it looks just as pretty and has all the gui toolbars and widgets that you would expect, but uses a tiny fraction of the resources. It's a great desktop environment for laptops and older computers.

I don't have any book recommendations, at least specifically with Debian. I've always been able to get an answer on the web.

Now, I usually start with http://www.debian-administration.org to get some better ideas of how I can get some task done.

I also find some good tips for Debian and Ubuntu at http://articles.slicehost.com

Thanks for the links.