Let me be the first to say 'Hooray Dbacks!' ;-)

> I recently installed Mandrake 8.1 from from an .ISO file from disk one.
> Something seemed to go just a bit wrong during the install when some
> packages were listed as uninstalled.

Possibly the packages on disk 2?

> Inspite of the warning, it installed for my matrox g450 and works better
> than any linux I've used to date.

For beginners, it appears that Mandrake is the best.  (And I've installed
a bunch, and ended up using Mandrake anyway, so its not JUST for beginners! ;-)

However, which distro can easily turn into a 'religious' war, because
we're human.

> However, I'm installing linux for 2 reasons. First, I just want to expand my
> experience with Linux, and second, I want to create an environment for
> learning Java, Python, C, Tcl, shells, etc. I need to get sharp as a
> programmer.
> Which dist would you recommend?

I agree with the other poster - it really does not matter that much
as far as that goes.  Choose one (or two ;-) and fiddle.

> These are the CDs I have:
> Linux-Mandrake 7.0

Upgrading from 7.0 to 8.1 is a bad idea.  I don't know about any
of the other distros, but there is a point where we went frmo
one version of libs to another, and upgrading through that point
is VERY painful.

> I tried to install the Debian just for the challenge.  I don't remember what
> went wront but it didn't install.  I tried Mandrake 7.0 but one of those two
> just left a black screen.

That's too bad, debian worked pretty good for me back when I tried it -
the big problem with it (for me, at the time) was that I could not
install EVERYTHING because I did not have a big enough disk drive
(only 2 gig back then)...

rc