mandrake is, indeed, an excellent starter linux. it was cake to install when i used it (on x86, admittedly), and it has a nicely packaged together KDE default. That being said, the last poster has a point--you can customize it to fit your needs.
in response to the original post: yes, panther comes with the apple x11, which you can also download for jaguar from the apple website. It works very well, running all the programs I've asked it to--mostly off of a school linux cluster. panther integrates it well, and it should be all you need to run most things you can pull down with fink.
has anyone used apt-rpm with mandrake ppc?