Which Linux distro?

Whichever distribution you like most.
Red Hat 8 is a bit old, try fedora core if you are wanting to go that route, they are on release 3 if I remember correctly. SuSE also has developer tools available, if you install them through yast. There is Kdevelop, Anjuta, Eclipse, Netbeans, Eric, etc.. You just have to install them, or find the RPMs if your edition of that distro doesn't come with the files. There is also an 'Everything UNIX' forum that is fairly helpful.
EDIT:
for one disc distros: Either an FTP installer of a distro(you will download the packages off an FTP server). Or something like Knoppix.

What kind of development tools are you looking for? I know that in the office I'm at we have at least one guy running SuSE now, and he does Java/SQL/VB development. Other than that I can't offer much, I still use Windows XP for my primary workstation.

Get ubuntu. It is the best distro I have ever installed. Got it running on my secondary box with dual celerons.

Its very user friendly and the Synaptic package manager is amazing simple. I do my development on Windows so I can't help you as far as that goes.

Of the three distributions I've used (Redhat 9, Mandrake 10 and Debian 3.1) I easily prefer Debian. As has already been said, Synaptic is a great package manager, but I also appreciated the amount of control I over the installation and setup process. I would suggest, however, that you make yourself familiar with Linux with another distribution before looking into Debian... It would have been a nightmare if I weren't already familiar with the use of some important utilities like apt-get.

Use Vector Linux! It's small, fast and based on Slackware. Version 4.3 comes with the 2.6.7 kernel and every development tool you'd probably need (except for IDEs), and hardware detection is a breeze :) It's what I use.

Clicky

Debian was ok, but it's packages were pretty outdated*, I prefer Mandrake, which is usually pretty good for beginners and has new packages(Both Mandrake and Debian can be installed with one CD, the extra CDs have more packages, which you can later download, I think this is the case with most distros)

* I've only tried the stable release, but I heard the unstable releases have newer packages. I'm planning on trying the latest unstable release soon.

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Original post by Roboguy Debian was ok, but it's packages were pretty outdated*, I prefer Mandrake, which is usually pretty good for beginners and has new packages(Both Mandrake and Debian can be installed with one CD, the extra CDs have more packages, which you can later download, I think this is the case with most distros) * I've only tried the stable release, but I heard the unstable releases have newer packages. I'm planning on trying the latest unstable release soon.

There are three types of "releases". Stable, testing, unstable. Stable is very old but as the name says it's very stable (only security holes are updated). Unstable on the other hand, is quite unstable. It's the "in development" version of the debian (well that's how I've understood).

I use testing which is up-to-date and works very well. I think there's going to be a new stable version released very soon (if they already haven't).

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I recommend rpgdeveloper to try out Debian or Fedora Core (which is very redhatlike and up-to-date). And I think all the distros fit in to one CD but there are a lot of optional packages on the other CDs. Atleast Debian can be installed fine without the other CDs: just install the base packages and then download the rest from the Internet.

Is there a forum faq or something? I think this is asked atleast two times a week :)

My experiences with Debian have been on testing, which is for the most part stable. For a while I switched to unstable and I don't think I'll be doing that again in the near future. [grin] If you do go with Debian, I recommend installing testing, switching to unstable only for specific software (like KDE 3.3, in my case) and then setting apt immediately back to testing so you don't download more unstable than you mean to.

Here's a question: n00b looking to set up a simple fileserver/webserver on a p166. Vector? DeLi? What?

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Original post by Pxtl Here's a question: n00b looking to set up a simple fileserver/webserver on a p166. Vector? DeLi? What?

i can't recommend a distro but i will recommend using tomcat as the webserver. it has built in jsp support and you can easily add php.

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Original post by Pxtl Here's a question: n00b looking to set up a simple fileserver/webserver on a p166. Vector? DeLi? What?

Debian. Read the docs, dammit.

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Original post by Ravuya Quote: Original post by Pxtl Here's a question: n00b looking to set up a simple fileserver/webserver on a p166. Vector? DeLi? What? Debian. Read the docs, dammit.

Well, if that's your logic, why don't I just go LFS? Alrighty, allow me to rephrase: n00b _with a life_.

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Original post by Perfunction Get ubuntu. It is the best distro I have ever installed. Got it running on my secondary box with dual celerons. Its very user friendly and the Synaptic package manager is amazing simple.

You just wait until you see the package manager for the next version of ubuntu.

mmmmmmm.... it's like caek!

sigh... just use cygwin.

its the windows noob distribution.

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Original post by rpgdeveloper I've tried/currently using SuSE Linux 9.1, but there is no development tools available...

No development tools? I find that hard to believe. Have you tried looking for development packages in YaST (I believe that's suse set up tool right?).

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Original post by C-Junkie Quote: Original post by Perfunction Get ubuntu. It is the best distro I have ever installed. Got it running on my secondary box with dual celerons. Its very user friendly and the Synaptic package manager is amazing simple. You just wait until you see the package manager for the next version of ubuntu. mmmmmmm.... it's like caek!

sweet. i need to start using my ubuntu box more. i played a few games of quake 3 and then just let it sit there :(

are there any distrib that you can download as a dvd image? (i only have 5 dvd & while i dunno if you can burn bootable cd iso on dvd i don't think i'd want to use 3 out of 5 for a single distro p) i tryed mandrake a while back & like it lots (only one wich recognized my dsl from the boot back then) but it seems the dvd is image is only available to platinium members & highter (11$/month & need to pay a full year from the start) & i'm interested in "free beer" (so not gonna pay more for a linux distro then for an OEM winxp pro...)

Some distributions (or at least Debian, I'm not sure about the others) have net install disks that only require one disk, and will download anything else needed later on. That's how I set up Debian myself.

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Original post by ranakor are there any distrib that you can download as a dvd image? (i only have 5 dvd & while i dunno if you can burn bootable cd iso on dvd i don't think i'd want to use 3 out of 5 for a single distro p) i tryed mandrake a while back & like it lots (only one wich recognized my dsl from the boot back then) but it seems the dvd is image is only available to platinium members & highter (11$/month & need to pay a full year from the start) & i'm interested in "free beer" (so not gonna pay more for a linux distro then for an OEM winxp pro...)

Fedora
Slackware
Debian