Help to some distro choices wanted!

hi all,

i'm a new linux user, but have been using mandrake on my centrino laptop for a few months. however, as i feel more confident with this stuff now, i'll make a fresh install sometime soon. and for that, i would like some advice.

i've got an acer tm 290 with a pentium m 1.4 ghz processor. i'm using it daily for my work at the university (doing physics, using latex, fortran, matlab, maple etc.). i am thinking about waiting until fedora core 4 is given a proper release at the beginning of june, but any advice is welcome. what about other distros? i've heard good things about gentoo, but i'm afraid it's too tricky for a newbie as myself. what about desktop environments? kde/gnome/something entirely different? what about lightweight alternatives so that my batteries last longer?

thanks!

hans joakim.

i've been browsing around a bit, and found distrowatch plus some other useful discussions on these forums. sorry, i should've checked that first.

There is no problem in asking questions.

try bayanihan a redhat based good for office and school use.. 600+ mb only.. unlike fedora... it runs on slower computer...

I'd suggest giving SimplyMepis a try. And possibly using something other than KDE, perhaps Xfce, which is quite a bit lighter and faster.