Heartland

Any suggestions?

PC:
Gigabyte board
P4 3.00Ghz
Radeon 9600 256 MB graphics (would like to run screen at 1280x1024)
2 Gb RAM

NB. must be free !

I really like Kubuntu for desktops, All the positives of Debian without the negatives. I prefer KDE which is why I go for Kubuntu instead of Ubuntu (Gnome). If you have a broadband connection package installation is very easy. Set-up is also very easy, just put in a single CD and follow the instructions and it'll happily live with any other OS on the PC.

With specs you've mentioned above it'll run fine and you should even get 3D stuff from your graphics card straight away.

For servers and remote admin I still use Debian.

http://www.kubuntu.org/

I use Fedora Core 5 for my desktop (you can use either Gnome or KDE for it - they're both included as options in the installation).

It's got a wide community support base, and comes in both 32 and 64 bit flavours (although I've opted for the 32 bit until the driver/device support for 64 bit gets a bit better).

And obviously it's free.

http://fedora.redhat.com/

I'd go for one of the Ubuntus. Personally I just use the plain one because I'm a Gnome fanboy, but Kubuntu might be better if you're switching from Windows. Fedora wouldn't be a bad choice either, most of the difference are geek semantics that you'll probably not be too bothered about until you get attached to one particular way of doing things. Just download one or the other and make sure you've printed off something that tells you how to get your modem/router working. I don't think I need to relay what a pain it was trying to run RedHat as my primary OS without a network card