I would also recommend Ubuntu but look at the Xubuntu version (Xfce4), it requires less computer resources than Ubuntu or Kubuntu (KDE).
DistroWatch is an excellent recommendation as a starting point. Welcome.

Have tried everything since 1996. I like Fedora very much as my main system on my laptop and Slackware for self made packages.

Ubuntu is nice too on some laptops, but I don't like their release versions for some minor packages that I use a lot. And I'm at home with rpm & tgz, I can't build packages with dependencies for Debian.

It's your personal joice. If you feel at home, you've found your right distribution.

Only if you choose programs that doesn't need Gnome and/or KDE libraries... it's a myth: the newest Xfce4 requires nearly the same memory resources than Gnome or KDE. Xfce is not faster/slower than Gnome as it use the same GTK lib.

"Xfce is a lightweight desktop environment for various *NIX systems. Designed for productivity, it loads and executes applications fast, while conserving system resources." - Olivier Fourdan, creator of Xfce.
I guess you better give the creator a call.

I third Linux Mint, it is much prettier and is derived from the latest Ubuntu.

I don't know about Mint, but gOS, is IMHO vastly inferior to Ubuntu. Try the Ubuntu Live CD. The Knoppix Live CD is kinda useless for "trying out" a distro since it's non-trivial to get Knoppix as a permanent Linux distribution. It's kinda beside the point anyways, as Knoppix is specificalyl designed to be a Live CD. However, the Ubuntu Live CD will give you a good idea how the actual Ubunut will feel like (and the Live CD IS the install CD - so if you like it, you just double click on the installer). Just expect the installed versions to be orders of magnitude faster than the Live CD, especially when it comes to program start up times.

Martin

Since you'll be new to linux I recommend ubuntu, you don't feel like its a huge change from windows to ubuntu. Actually, I just installed it last week and haven't had any problems and it automatically installed my hardware and there are a lot of forums to help with ubuntu.

I also switched after using N800 for a month.

Now lets see what impression the (K)ubuntu live CD is giving to somebody who is new to Linux.

No fancy desktop effects (Compiz is not working out of the box), disappointing websufing experience (flash and some other important plugings not preinstalled), DVD playback not possible, duh! (at least for encrypted DVDs), hardware xyz not working (for some reason the hardware detection of the (K)ubuntu live CD seems to be worse than the hardware detection of (K)ubuntu when being installed on disk).....

I guess if this live CD was my first encounter with Linux I would turn right back to Windows.

Funny enough all these things are working like a charm once (K)ubuntu is installed on disk. Or at least you can get them running without much effort.

So in my opinion distributions like Knoppix, which are designed to be used mainly as a live CD and where as many features as possible are actually working in live CD mode are quite useful when somebody want's to explore Linux.

I tried Ubuntu, but it kept randomly rebooting on me while using flash. And it was a pain in the rear to get my wireless adapter working, though from checking Ubuntu's supported hardware list, it seems they've fixed it with Hardy Heron. I'll give that a spin when it officially comes out.

*edit* Not saying don't try it, just saying things don't always work. But I guess that's Vista for you also.

If you're still interested in Ubuntu after the livecd; and you want to keep your windows partition "clean" and don't fancy messing about with resizing partitions and the like, check out Wubi here: http://wubi-installer.org/

It's a "Windows Installer" for Ubuntu 8.04 that sets up Ubuntu inside a large file on your Windows partition which is bootable from the Windows boot menu. Works wonderfully well, safe as a very safe thing, etc

Actually, resizing partitions was really a snap. The Windows partition is left as normal after it's sized down. I even added an extra 20G partition just for media and the like to share between Ubuntu/Windows.
I guess Wubi's good if you want to be completely safe, though. (However, it did leave an entry in the add/remove programs list, guess I'm just griping...)