Progress, but now...

[Kyrath. (AKA Rob)]

Hi, 
My issues with the serial port have been fixed.  Sure enough, it was disabled in the bios.

Now comes the preparation of installing Linux.
I have a copy of the Slackware 9.1 boot and root disks, (3 floppies in all) and the 3 shrike images burned onto cd. 
First, I've seen references to the slackware .iso images, but haven't been able to actually find them.  So any info of where they can be obtained would be appreciated.
Second, if I interpreted certain recent comments correctly, it appears that the newest red hat distro is the fedora, not the shrike.  True?
Finally, what would be the pros and cons of these distributions? 
I hope to eventually install circlemud and learn some C++ while learning the mud server.  However, first things first.  I will need to learn basic Linux and get a more complete understanding of the Linux infrastructure.  Currently, too much windows/dos in the brain. 

Thanks for any and all help.
-- Rob