I'm interested in getting linux, but I don't know what distribution to choose. I tried Ubuntu and found it to be terrible.
(Too resource intensive and other issues.)

Here's what I'm looking for:

- Not resource intensive (Ubuntu ate 90% of CPU) (If not possible then at least a choice of shells (?) )
- Support for: ATI Rage 128 Pro based cards, Crystal Audio, Lucent Winmodems (a website has packages for: Debian, Gentoo, Red Hat, Fedora Core, Mandrake, Suse, Connectiva)
- Large software base (don't want to have to compile everything)
- Useful for normal users (not just experts, so my family can use it too), don't have to edit a million config files (GUI for configuration?)
(One's below are optional, so long as modem is supported)
- Comes with Wine or has a Wine package available

I was thinking of getting Suse or Open Suse (with non-oss addon cd). (Mainly because it supports my modem out of the box)
My computer has between 300-360mb of mem (can't remember) and is a Pentium II 450mhz with a 6gb hd.

Any recommendations? (Besides a new computer. )

EDIT: Could someone tell me good / badpoints of common distrobutions?

ok, I have used FC4, and it isn't bad, but Ubuntu wasn't that resouce intensive for me once installed. And this was on my laptop with a 500hmz PIII and 128MB RAM. Knoppix (you can install it) and Debian wern't bad. From what I have seen with Suse, it doesn't dual boot well (when I used it, couldn't boot into Windows, had to use CD to get into Suse, and my foreign exchange student also had problems not being able to boot into Windows). Take this info as you wish.

With that machine, you do not want Gentoo though, you will do some work on having to compile everything.

The default for Knoppix is KDE, which is fairly resource-intensive, but if you could compile it yourself and drop Gnome on instead, you'd probably have a winner.

Honestly, I'd go with Ubuntu It isn't ubuntu itself that was eating your CPU, but some program. Just use the system monitor to see what program, and see if there are any logs as to why its eating up so much of your CPU. That is definitely not normal ubuntu behavior...

You could also try Debian

This was while idling at the desktop with nothing running.

There's no such thing as running nothing

Since I'm assuming you're a n00b with Linux, it would probably be best for you to get a live cd and install it onto your hard drive. Knoppix is a good choice, and there are several others; Given your comp. specs, you might want to try installing gnome or fluxbox after installing the live cd.

my Ubuntu 6 distro is using... 6% cpu atm, and that;s with GAIM, firefox, and a terminal running...

What's your cpu specs though?

cough... 2ghz AMD64

Well there you go; bombu is running ubuntu on a 450mhz pII

still, it shouldnt eat 90% just at the desktop...

Yes, that should translate to about 8% usage on bombu's comp, maybe more, but certainly not 90%.

What can I say, Ubuntu has never liked my computer. (I've tried different versions) It also takes 5 minutes to dial the internet after hitting activate.

Try seeing if any of your local computer shops have a copy... Mine does (i dled it, but still). Ubuntu runs very well on my computer too, and I doubt it would eat up 90 %.

P.S. I am assuming that that was an actual install and not running from a LIVE cd? Because if it was, than I think that that might explain it...

you must have a strange chipset... i've never had a linux distro like my laptop, but that's cuz my laptop is very windows proprietary in design...

Installed on hd. When I said it takes 5 min to dial, i ment that it takes 5 min to pick up and start dialing, then it takes about 2 min to connect.

Anyone ever heard of SimplyMEPIS 6.0 or PCLinuxOS Preview 0.92

I always had good luck W/ Fedora except for the size(I was installing it on a pc with 6 gigs of space, which Windows took up 3 Gigs.)

Also, Storm was good, but I think they went under.

I'm surprised you had those problems with Ubuntu; Cemetech-0 runs a flavor of Ubuntu, and even with about one hundred clients simultaneously downloading SAX content (the peak so far) my load usage didn't go above 0.90.

Go to Applications->System Tools->System Monitor inside of Ubuntu (thats the default location in Gnome, not sure if Ubuntu moves it) and look to see whats eating up your CPU. Just idling at your desktop you'll have ~20-50 programs sleeping, just like there are a bunch of background programs running in windows (that are core parts, I mean, not all that other crap you install)

Although I'm curious as to how you know its using 90% of your CPU if you claim to not have anything open

Suse 10 is supposed to be pretty n00b friendly aswell, so you might want to try that

But you'll be dead by the time Suse installs, let alone install one single little application. It was that slow.