Linux distro for HP

[Dimitris E. Kiousis]

Dear Friends! Actually I am a newbie (to be honest a newbie-newbie). I just use Linux because to run my finite element program and because I find it much cooooooler than Win. And eventually because I want to master it! I recently bought an HP 9030. It came with Win installation. I would like to install of course Linux. I am looking for a distro that will be as automatic and with fewer problems as possible. (a guy that looks for automatic installations....hm... not what you would call a Linux expert user). In my table pc I have RH9 and as I can remember they were quite easy (even disk partitioning was automatic). Which distro do you suggest?  Which will be the easier for me? Thank you very much!!! Dimitris