Sorry - sent this to the wrong place first time around!

For what it's worth (probably not a lot...), I ended up with Slackware 8.0 and Mandrake Freq on one machine for comparison. Speaking as a complete non-Linux-expert, I found the only saving grace of Mdk was that it worked my borrowed USB camera, whereas Slack wouldn't. Some of Mdk's MORE frustrating habits included secretly writing to my OKI LED printer and re-arranging settings that I perfected years ago and then claiming that it was something it wasn't, and also inviting me to select what packages I'd like installed and then not bothering to install them.

Slack, on the other hand, went in, got on, and generally did its bit. Thanks to John Seago's timely intervention, I discovered that early problems I was having were due to duff disks from Crazy Penguin. Linux Emporium did me much better!!

I elected to install KDE on Slackware but soon began to hate its bloat. Then I discovered ICEWM and there was no looking back. Partly due to the very good documentation on how to configure ICEWM files, even I was able to get it to work and add my own favourite functions. If I can, anyone can. And ICEWM is FAST, even on an ex-skip P166!

So Slack+ICEWM gets my vote (speaking as a beginner, remember). One or two people are gradually trying to steer me down the path of recompiling a kernel to get USB to work with Slack. I lay awake at night worrying about that, but at least I've got a Linux that works, enables me to run Netscape, Acrobat, Xv and things and start the learning process.

Oh, yes - and ALWAYS have MC installed. Darned useful for poking about to see how Linux works.

Hope this helps someone! Please delete it if it doesn't....

Gerald.