It really depends on what you're looking to use it for. I think Dell likes Redhat enterprise for their servers (since they now offer their services) but I'm not to sure. Is this for a laptop or a desktop?

I have a laptop. Would Red Hat be the best for a laptop too?

I have a Dell Inspiron5100 and I'm using Suse 9.2 pro. Works great!!! There are two hangers I'm not using the moden so ?? and the wireless is a truemobile1300 and I am using the Linuxant Driverloader to load the windows drivers, but it works excellent!! I was using Mandrake 10.1 which is great, but Suse is more robust IMO.

mandrake99

still consider myself a newbie.

I recently switched to Fedora Core 3 from Xandros 2.0 deluxe. Everything is cleaner on Fedora and I have been able to get everything I need to work right. There was a little trick with the dvd but I was able to get the appropriate downloads. Gimp is giving me a little issue but I know I'll figure it out. Everything else work for me right from the CD.

Xandros is great especially for first time users and I appreciate Xandros very much for introducing me to Linux. Xandros gave enough stuff working (and working well) that I could work at getting the rest of the stuff on my own.

For first time users, I highly recommend pay the dollars and get Xandros. I hear Xandros 3 is really good. Once comfortable go for the bleeding edge stuff (or not.) Having been weened on Debian and KDE, I find I actually prefer Gnome. Fedora Core 3 gives you the choice between KDE or Gnome. Now, I have Fedora working well, I don't think I will be playing with other distros for a little while(e.g. Fedora Core 3 is cool).

FYI: I tried and love knoppix as well. (I gave a copy to my parents to run for a while.)
Besides Xandros, my second favorite debian/kde distro is Mepis. It is better and seems easier to run both as live cd or load on your hard drive than knoppix.

I have a Dell 4600
Samsung DVD- Rom SD-616E
3.5” 1.44 MB floppy drive
40 gb hard drive
partition
10 GB Windows
25 GB Fedora (ext3)
The remainder is swap
Intel 82801 EB SATA Controller
Intel 82562EX 10/100 Ethernet
HP Desk jet 690C
Intel 82801AC'97 Audio
Intel 82865G Integrated Graphic Devices