best distro for me?

[stewartfan]

Ok, so I have a PC with the following specs:
Gateway GT5658E
Phenom 9500, 3GB RAM, 1TB HDD (2x500), Radeon HD 2400XT
And I want to know which distro will definitely support this computer, and how. Also, I want the one that comes with the most features. I tried Kubuntu on my old computer and it was good and all, but it was very laggy, and it got old quick. Now that I've recently acquired a newer computer, I would like to experiment more. I'm not looking to replace Windows on this computer, or Mac OS on my laptop, but I do want to mess around with this in some of my spare time. Is Kubuntu the one I'm looking for? Also, once installed, I want to try out all of those cool little visual effects on YouTube, and anything else like that. What are the best free Apps/Programs for whatever distro I choose, and any other knowledge you could share would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance,

Alex

[arodlinux]

Try OpenSuse 11.2 and/or Ubuntu. Also with that much memory your PC running KDE should be fine! My 0.02.

[stewartfan]

it actually reminds me of Kubuntu, from what I remember. I will definitely take it into consideration

[jmadero]

"definitely support" is impossible to say. Some aspects of your computer you simply can't know without doing a lot of research, one of my old roomates had a system that "on first glance" was very linux friendly (he built it to be that way!) but...his motherboard had a cheap controller on it that made the SATA act funny with Linux, took him weeks to get it working right and only after swapping out some parts....that's just how it goes when you have hardware makers not concerned with Linux at all.

One potential problem I see is that Radeon card, a year ago ATI support was HORRIBLE in Linux, since then, it's gotten better but it's still has some problems. Nvidia or with lower end intel cards are much much better supported. So, you may run into issues, no guarantees BUT if you do run into issues, we're all here to help

As for apps, really depends on what you are looking for. Compiz (those cool visuals you see on youtube) is relatively easy to install these days, especially in ubuntu/kubuntu (I'm personally a gnome fan over kde but to each their own). If you want speed you should check out an alternative desktop interface such as xfce (I could never get into it but it's fast )What kinds of things are you looking for?

I have a general script that installs everything that I like and makes my system "pretty" at least to my standards. I run conky for monitoring my machine, cairo-dock for my window select program, compiz with the cube and devilspie to make software "auto" appear on certain sides of my cube (music player on the left side, thunderbird on the right) and internet/documents on the front main one. I use chromium/firefox for browsing, VLC for videos, Amarok for music.

Those are all pretty standard other than conky and devilspie but those aren't uncommon, just not quite as common. I still use Pidgin for chatting over empathy for personal taste reasons.

List some things you're interested in doing and we can give you more suggestions