You'll be happy to know that none of those actually require any programming skills. Well, there are shell scripts but that's it.
Like LFS, it is just choosing what you want to have in your operating system then instructions for all the work that is required for compiling it into something useful. :)

Ubuntu will be pretty slow on an old pentium 3 because it actually does have a decent hardware requirement so I would recommend Xubuntu. Its Ubuntu with a lightweight desktop enviroment so its good for beginners on older hardware. As for the equivalent of .exes that would be .deb which you can just double click on in Ubuntu to install. A lot of good software can be found through the use of the ubuntu software center. For articles for beginners the new user guides will always help out. So if there are any specific problems you have just let us know. In case you don't mind for a bit of a learning curve (not having everything done for you) there are several other lightweight distros that will work fine.

Simple, It was for the stability and the fact it was free. And the freedom and choices were just a bonus. I had experienced a total crash with xp and after switching to Windows 7 because it was supposedly more stable but that was a total lie. I had 2 pretty bad crashes and just about everything I used would crash a couple times a month. So that sealed the deal.

Also I'm glad there's an off-topic section now.

You could use a live cd like gparted after you freed up space in Windows to create an extended partition. Then inside that create a 2 gb logical partition for swap and format it as swap then create another one in the extended for the root and format it to whatever file-system you like, as long as its supported by which os you want to install.

Thanks Mike. That one seems pretty good, but I already have gotten The Linux Pocket Guide. It's already been a ton of help, and I've switched to Fedora instead of Ubuntu. Much better I need to say. Probably going to try a lot of other distros since I can use the command line now.

If you're using Ubuntu it might be in Ubuntu software center so you could search for it in there and just click the install button. If its in the repos you could just open up a terminal and type

Sudo apt-get install Skype 

sudo apt-get install {package name} 

Thanks to both of you. I guess I'll try most of those you recommended. I haven't heard about Antiux before and some people I know really like the .rpm's so I guess I will try out Fedora too.

Hi everyone, Lately I've been getting tired of Ubuntu and its instability. With the constant updates that will often break the system so I was wanting to move onto some other Linux distro. I know some basics so a little bit more working in the command line would not bother me (except for compiling sources, still haven't got that down yet). I was thinking about using Mepis which I've heard is a really good one for beginners; and it still uses apt I think, which I've gotten used to.

If there are any other suggestions that you think would be better or you have your own recommendations just tell me about them.
Thanks for any help.

Thanks for the suggestion Istimsak, that sounds perfect for me since I use a laptop that I carry around. A nice little Linux book that I can always have with me instead of carrying a normal one around. I'd be able to practice a bit of scripting. I'll definitely get that for myself.

Thanks, I wasn't planning on learning about the GUI or advanced things like that. Really just the basics and Bash, not like I'm going to be doing an LFS thing. (Although I would like to once I'm experienced enough)

Linux wouldn't be any fun if you only knew how to do 6 things through the command land.
So I'll just get a few more suggestions and a ask a few friends before I decide which would be the best and not just a waste of my time and money for what I want to do. And thanks again for all your help.