where we are in scotland for holidays the net is 28kbps dialup which sucks so bad....

i used to have a PMMX 166mhz Olivetti. it was grey and what would now be called a small form factor case

FreeBSD is hardcore, honestly. If you want to be a hacker, this will teach you how to be a hacker.

openbd is more hardcore

Pure UNIX is even harder core. Text base UNIX, that is.

but UNIX (generally) isnt free e.g AIX, SystemV, HP/UX all cost megabucks (well, solaris is kinda free i suppose)

can i append a question to this? I dont think I am hijacking and it would be better to append the question here rather than start a whole new thread.

Is there a version of linux that is really fast, can do a great variety of software like chess, wordprocessing, databases, java web browser and so on in a GUI but is still reasonably hardcore enough to teach one some linux(i mean not do things via a GUI but in the CLI. Of course the software should run in a window once opened.)

sorry if this sounds like a stupid question. but i am new to linux. very new.

Debian is very fast. If you have a fast computer, I recommend SLED 10.