I have a computer with AMD duron 1.1 Ghz, 512 mb of ram, and a 40gb hard drive, what would be a good distro for a very basic system like this one?
While Puppy and Debian are great with Squeeze being pehaps a bit much for a new Linux user and Puppy a pain to install to a harddrive Look at Distros like Lubuntu. It only requires 128 mg of RAM and will run well with 512 mg of RAM. Its part of the Ubuntu world and uses their pakages. You have many options with some being a bit lighter then others. I mentioned Lubuntu but Xubuntu is also cool. Some like Crunchbang and Archbang are also worth a look. Less well known Distros are also nice. Vector, Bodhi, Silatz, the problem is some aren't updated as often and have less of a following. So if you have questions may not find answers quickly.