Knoppix. Was recommended it by someone I chatted with at the time and that did not go well. This was not Knoppix's fault though, but rather me not knowing what I got into. Things worked as one would expect, the applications that were included ran without issues, but the issue came when wanted to install software. At the time didn't know anything about linux, so didn't know how to use the terminal to install software, and when trying to install new ones using exe files that didn't work for now obvious reasons. So threw that stuff out and went back to windows, and didn't touch Linux again until Ubuntu Hardy Heron which went a lot better.