Ixchel suggested to try Fedora but after two tries with two different disk images it wouldn't boot up, so we went with plan B and installed Mandriva. I still remember the good 'ol days of Mandrake 5.x, I felt sad when the company behind it filled for bankrupcy some years ago, later I discovered that it was alive again and fused with the Conectiva distro.
I still feel a little bit disoriented, I didn't realize I have spent so much time using Windows in a regular basis, accessing unix/linux servers from time to time, now I have to remember my linux-fu.
Last time I installed Mandrake^H^H^Hiva it still used gnome as default desktop environment, and the icons were not that flashy, I must confess I never liked KDE before but it is starting to grow on me. Gone are the days of recompiling the kernel to support a common device (or even the network card!). This experience feels like a rebirth, and I'm liking it
