I've only gotten into the security aspect of computers very recently. I've already been highly persuaded to migrate to Linux and get away from Windoze. Partly for the security aspect of avoiding the majority of viruses and learning more indepth security skills. However, I'm having a hell of a time with it.

My XP box is a hell in trying to load Linux so far. I obtained a free version of Red Hat 7.0 but it claims that there is no free space on my computer. I have 65G of free space. I got a version of Red Hat 9.0 but anaconda crapped out immediately on me.

I took an old comp I had, formatted the harddrive, got pretty far with setting up an install of RH7.0, despite it bitching me out for having a FAT partition.(??????HOW THE HELL CAN I FORMAT MY HARDDRIVE IN A LINUX FRIENDLY WAY?????) But then Anaconda crapped out on me again.

I've read a lot of good things about SuSe and want to buy that. But at this point I dispair of getting any linux loaded. I've asked linux lovers through friends of friends but none of their advice works. I've scoured Google and AO but nothing tells me specifics about the faults I get.

Which *nix should I try without hiring a expert to walk me through it in person on my comp???

Any opinion on the matter would be greatly appreciated.