Thanks all for the replies,

I have a amd64 bit with 1GB ram and I have a copy of vmware 5.
I will try the given web sites and start with live cd/dvds just to get
a feeling of how it is going to work.
I want this machine to have a good distribution of linux that includes
all the necessary softwares for burning dvds, office applications and
of course all the c/c++, java, etc compilers and tools and easy
to install.

iforone wrote:
> hash wrote:
> > hello,
> > i am planning to install linux, but not sure what is available and
> > which linux
> > that is freely available is good. I would like to be able to do
> > programming
> > in linux as well as install vmware on it.
> > any suggestion will be appreciated.
> > thanks,
> > -hashim
>
> Concerning VMWare - just *search* all recent NG (NewsGroup) postings of
> any/all *nix NGs, like this one.....using keyword(s) "vmware". Many of
> your questions/fears/concerns (and more) are already answered...and
> some in great detail. Visit VMWare's site, they have fairly
> comprehensive FAQ and help sections.
>
> Programming ?
> Most GNU/Linux distributions have very many programming apps/tools/docs
> (some distros contain them already as default in their distro, but you
> can ALWAYS add them to almost any distro). I'm a dunce when it comes to
> programming and I'm relatively new to linux myself, but just searching
> the /usr/share/docs on my Debian HDD installation -- typical ones I
> see are Python, Perl, C/C+, Bash scripting, POSIX compliance, etc.
> (please forgive my 'terminology' mistakes). There's a plethera of
> choices (compilers, IDEs, etc)....in GNU/Linux it's all about *choice*
> :-)