Hey,
I got a new Laptop, and they would only sell me it with XP. Annoying. Now, nearly a year has passed and I'm getting itchy for Linux again. Getting nostalgic for security. So I'm planning to do a partition and run a dual-boot. I only wanna give 10-15Gb to Linux (the hard-drive on this thing ain't that big, and windows can be such bloat-ware), so I'm pondering what to get. I had Mandriva before, which was good. I'd happily go with that again. But then going with the same thing just cos that's what I did before feels a bit unadventurous. Does anyone have any other recommendations? What are the favourites nowadays?

I'm looking for something:-
1) slim (like I said, wanna give Linux about 15Gb. maybe 20Gb MAX);
2) which can play CDs without giving me all kinds of hell - Mandriva used to play them silently unless you used this really crappy player which would only play one track then stop and wait for you to pick another... >:/
3) with Mozilla, firewall, and a decent Open Office, obviously...
4) DVDs would be nice too...

Thanks in advance for any help.
B