Hi guys, I'd like to give Linux a go, but I'm having trouble finding a good distro to use. Essentially, I'm looking for something that is easy to install and that is light weight enough that I can run it on Virtualbox without using up much of my already dwindling system resources. Really, all I need is terminal window and it needs to have all of the necessary manuals and whatnot. As I'm just trying to learn the Shell at the moment, I do not need a GUI. I've tried cygwin, but optimally I'd like a full Linux distro to use so I can add/remove users and adjust system settings and whatnot. Thanks in advance!

I would suggest that you consider live cd's. Start with Knoppix 5.11 maybe. The best shell only install was ZipSlack, you can still run it but it needs a fat format and boot to real dos. There are tons of shell only distro's. See distrowatch.com maybe for ideas and what others might be using. Really every distro is based on some basic shell to some extent. If you really want to learn linux from the basic's then get Gentoo. You build your system from scratch. "Best Practices", Event viewer, host file, perfmon, antivirus, anti-spyware, Live CD's, backups, are in my top 10

Thanks for that, I'll definitely give it a go. I was looking around and most people were suggesting GUIs and whatnot. Thanks for your reply.

I'd strongly recommend Vector Linux Light Edition 6.0, with the IceWM window manager. This is very XP-ish (but without the flakey Gates guts and malevolent Micturatingsloth license). This Slackware-based distro is relatively easy to install, virtually bugless and VERY fast. If you install this, select the XFS filesystem. Afterward, use Gslapt to install OpenOffice and/or AbiWord. For a light browser, to suppliment the memoryhog Firefox, use Midori. Vector already comes with all the various codecs.

Very good information. I have not heard of this distro. I will definitely look into it. Thus far I have been using Ubuntu and have had pretty good success with it. Thanks for your feedback.

In my not-so-humble opinion, nearly any major distribution will provide a fairly good experience for a new-to-Linux user. Unless your computer is more than a year or two old, the GUI will be similar with most Distributions and provide an easy to use interface. Some distributions will use the Gnome Desktop environment by default while others will have KDE. A few will favor the lighter (less resource intensive) Desktops such as LXDE, IceWM, XFCE, and a host of others. I second jefro's recommendation that you start with Live! CD's. Most distributions provide a Live! CD that includes the option to install it to your computer if you like what you get. Check out several distributions so you can be sure you have the one that best suits you. Try those recommended above as well as Suse, Fedora, and my personal distribution of choice, Mandriva. Each has characteristics that may make it the one for you. Because I do not like to waste CD's you will be best served to install a VM (Virtual Machine) application, then run the live CD image as if it were a disk in the VM. One such application is Sun Microsystem's Virtual Box, and Microsoft has one as well (do not know the name off the top of my head). Virtual Box is a free download (and free for personal use). I use it here to run Windows under Linux because I still have several friends who choose to use it (Windows), and frequently need help when things go wrong. HTH, Ernie Registered Linux User 247790

Another vote for live distros. Without knowing your system specs (you didn't define them), I'd start off with the "lightest" (DSL, Feather, etc.) and try "heavier" ones (Ubuntu, Fedora, etc.) should you feel you have the horsepower. Just make sure you're familiar with writing .iso images and remember that running from CD/DVD is naturally slower than running from an installed version... http://www.livecdlist.com