Hardware

hello
i have a toshiba 4600 and i want to put some form of linux on it. i want to learn linux and thought that a dedicated machine would be a good idea. i bought the laptop second hand and find that the windows 95 has some problems. i tried to install a pcmcia network card and some files are missing. the laptop says insert the 95 cd rom, which i dont have. i thought start fresh and install redhat 5.1 which i found someone else has done. i dont want any of the programs on the laptop. so:
1. can i wipe the computer and install redhat 5.1 alone?
2. or do i have to keep windows on there as well?

any help would be greatly appreciated.
my aim is to learn linux and have a laptop that i can put on a home network with the pcmcia card and use the internet as well.

---------- Post updated at 07:57 PM ---------- Previous update was at 07:52 PM ----------

ok i found that redhat i have to buy, is there a free alternative?

CentOS or Fedora (as free alternatives of Redhat, specifically)

nice one, cheers
also, how would i wipe my computer of windows 95 and download one of these?

Red Hat is actually free, but it's also as old as some Win 9x releases (the last version was released somewhere around 2002-2003).

FWIW, Red Hat 7 is still available for download on RHN.

would red hat 7 work on an i486
i have a toshiba 4600c, im not sure what is compatible or how to tell.
also, how could i wipe the laptop and install this on its own?

RH 7 would run perfectly fine. However I believe you're confusing RH with RHEL which is the flagship and current release from Red Hat Inc. (although it's not free anymore - you have to pay for support).

I'd suggest you install CentOS which is a distribution based on RHEL... CentOS even claims to be 100% binary compatible with RHEL.

Fedora is also RHEL-based but most of its bundled software is beta, experimental, RC, unstable, etc so there may be a few bugs here and there.

i dont know how to download this. i want to get centos 5.5
do i need a mirror site or something?