Which distros should I consider ?

[guildl at rcn.com (Laurence Guild)]

I bought an HP laptop a couple of months ago. 
>From "my computer" it shows:

processor 1.60 GHz
590 Mhz, 504 MB of ram

from Accesories -> system tools -> system information it shows

total 512 MB, available 105.36 MB
total virtual 2 gig
avail virtual 1.96 gig

I am familiar with unix in that I worked on an AIX for many years and SUN OS/solaris as well.

I am a programmer, mainly interested in Perl, Ruby, Java, C++, etc. I might want to play with appache web server as well. I'm doing this for my resume, experience, and possible work. I want to be able to put linux on my resume and use my laptop with linux to do telecommuting type work if needed for various companies that require linux and I have a particular interest in web type work with Ruby, Perl/CGI, etc. I allready had an opportunity with a company that uses linux. After they contacted me via email, I told them I don't have it installed so I'd have to log onto their web server and I never heard back from them since. I felt this lack of linux on my laptop to be a distinct disadvantage and is something I have been meaning to address. I am interested in recommendations about which distros of linux I should consider and why. I've looked at the linux.org listing and the number of distros is endless and somewhat mind boggling. I will try to attend a linux meeting sometime, but may be up in maine on the 22nd. A guy I worked with says debian is the best and the mention of SUSE on the BLU site aroused my curiousity such that I browsed a book on this at the book store. I may be up in maine on the 19th as well however.

 I would like to keep an Windows partition initially. Should I look for assistance on an install ?
I don't want to mess up my machine or spend endless hours trying to figure this out.


Thanks,

Larry
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