Slackware rocks, there's no doubt about that, but you should also be aware of debian - available from http://www.debian.org , there's also detailed instructions on how to do an install over the net using http or ftp. I've just put slink onto 2 386's somebody was going to throw away - takes a while to boot but it runs ok.

Trinux available from http://www.trinux.org/ is a hella good security based distro, 2 floppies and a dhcp server on you lan and your away - might seem a bit tricky if your newish to linux though.