Distribution Decision
What I've been pondering: Mandriva, Fedora Core, Ultima (Slackware), Gentoo, PCBSD (FreeBSD).
Mandriva Since I've been running Mandrake for that last few years this would have the advantage of familiarity. But it's also the thing that's been bugging me, and I picked it initially for being good for a Linux beginner. I'm still a Linux beginner, but not quite as much of one now.
Fedora Core While Mandrake originally derived from Red Hat which has become Fedora Core, they diverged a while ago. Each is its own thing, which can be good and bad. Both use RPM, but an RPM for one will not work on the other. There likely will be much familiarity, and things will still be fairly close. Fedora has the advantage of a large and active developer community, so there will be packages for it.
Ultima (Slackware) This has impressed me on older hardware and is what I have on my laptop. It works. But while it has packages, it has no real package management. As annoying as Mandrake's dependency warnings were, I at least got warnings rather than a broken system (okkay, it did break, but I did that when I bypassed the package management). If I were to go this route, I'd likely do a Slackware install since Ultima is targeted at 486 and my primary system is an Athlon and I might as well use the additional instructions. I would make some tweaks by taking a few Ultima packages, such as the tabbing version of Dillo.
Gentoo What, compile everything? Not really. But a significant part would be compiled and optimized for the host system. I'd likely set aside a week or so for it all and use the laptop for net connectivity in that time. The real appeal is the portage package management system. But it would take significant time and be rather different from what I'm used to. I don't know that I'm ready for Gentoo yet, at least on my primary system.
PCBSD (FreeBSD) PCBSD is just FreeBSD with a good installer. FreeBSD has the ports system of package management, which inspired Gentoo's portage system. BSDs have a good reputation as really solid and stable systems. They also have a reputation for not keeping up with the latest things so well. My machine is not new, and I don't mind not keeping up with the Joneses, especially when that buy stability. The downside is that BSD is not Linux. There's nothing wrong with that, and it could be argued as an advantage. In my case, however, it means a new system with a new way of doing things.
With all that in mind, the best thing for me right now is probably Fedora. There'd be some familiarity, similar package management, a greater probability of being able to find a desire package. Mandriva is the close second, but it's annoyed me a few times and I do desire to move away from it at least for a while. Slackware's lack of package management means it'd be easy for me to really screw it up. Gentoo and FreeBSD have good package management but I'd rather spend my time using the system rather than (re)learning it.
In thinking all this over, I did realize that I haven't really used percheron my Window 2000 system for anything other than backup hardware. So putting one of my considered-but-rejected choices on that machine might be a good idea. There's really no reason for me to keep Windows around. I'd likely get more use out of it with Linux or BSD.
But first things first. I need to make a good backup of the data on belgian before installing anything.