i think that the distro that is right for somone depends on what experiance they allready have...

somone who just a bout knows how to use IE in XP and writes teh occasional letter with word
woudl probabbly get on fine with pclinuxos, and k/ubuntu

someone who is an experianced user of windows and can do most things but isnt quite up to editing the registry to make performance tweaks would like a distro like suse, debian, fedora or mandriva


(i fell into that catogry when i started usinmg linux and fopund suse perfect for my needs and experiance but that was just me.)

somone who comes from a sysadmin background in one of the unixes like solaris would probablly get on with slackware like a house on fire,

then you have gentoo which IMO is more suted to those who have been using linux for a while normally using one of the simpler distros as a stepping stone.
(im playiong with gentoo at the moment while dual booting with suse for ease of use)

I haven't had any difficulty installing any of the distros I've tried, but I haven't tried Gentoo or Arch yet. I've glanced at their installation instructions and they do seem more of a challenge than others.

Come on, I'm sure you know what I meant. Read the rest of my post.

Its senseless to compare the two in terms of difficulty.

if a person installs ubuntu they will have an easy time of it, but they wont learn much about what makes Linux what it is & how it functions under the hood, if a user uses ubuntu then that is all they learn is ubuntu, or debian or mandriva, or fedora, they only learn tools specific to that particular distro...

if a user wants to learn what actually makes Linux run & function under the hood i suggest Slackware or Crux or Arch, distros like Linux From Scratch are just a little too tedious & time consuming even for the most experienced Linux gurus, but if a user wants to build up a working install of Linux package by package individually then Linux From Scratch is the way to go...

Well, it is possible to make a good distro from Ubuntu. Delete almost every program you don't need, install a lighter desktop environment, delete Gnome, and boot into text mode. Do everything with command line. But-thats not as fun.

i agree.
Ubuntu and like distros are good for the first steps and learning the basic linx fundimentals
after that you can go onto one of the more involved distros (like slackware) with a basic background in linux.
then you learn about whats under the hood.

but you need the basic steps down first,
what use is it trying to build a kitcar if you dont even know how to drive.

learn to drive on a simple to use distro like ubuntu/fedora/suse
then try a car with manual transmission (a stick) like debian
then try a kitcar like gentoo or slackware

if you really want a challange you can build a car form component parts that arnt in a kit ie. Linux form scrach

Every time I see a thread like this one.

"*** distro is hard" or "#### distro is for newbs"

I think to myself, "Wrong!"

Slackware is perfectly fine for at least one newbie, I know this for a fact because I was that newbie when I started using Slackware. Not hard. Very easy.

I'm sure that Ubuntu could be great for an advanced user that loves to do everything from the CLI. I can't confirm this as a fact because I'm not an advanced user. But I'm fairly sure that any wanted programs would be available via apt-get/dpkg/source.

Just because something is more difficult for you does not mean that it is true in general.

This is just like those "Linux isn't ready for *******" threads. No difference.

@ Okie: You claim using Slackware will teach you how things work "under the hood". Well allow me to not believe you. You seem to be running Slackware, please go ahead and share your "under the hood" knowledge; and how SLACKWARE helped you gain this knowledge. Thanks. Proof or it never happened.

Yes. Slackware is for experts and Ubuntu is for newbies. Wrong. People think this because they themselves are newbies. Look at it this way: you are new, you go for Ubuntu. You get to know how to move around gnome and what not .. so you think of learning a bit more .. so let's say you go for Slackware/Gentoo/etc. You learn and learn and learn. Enough to be comfortable with almost any distribution. Now you explain to me why at this stage you wouldn't go back to using Ubuntu. You have the knowledge to do things CLI-only .. but you're lazy. You'd rather keep your cli magical skills for those times when the Ubuntu GUI breaks stuff.

I always kinda thought thats what most sane people do. At this point, why use anything other than ubuntu/kubuntu? Its seems like its only flaw is removing features...

that some people actually use.

Slackware is not hard distro to use, Slackware makes it easy to learn those under the hood things the right way that is...

with slackware you can slam it on a PC with everything and run it as is, or you can do a bare bones install and build up from there learning as you go...

- - - - - -

@reverse WRONG!

You can always choose Xfce if you want a lighter DE in Ubuntu.
You can also do all the command-line stuff you want: with Bash, Pdksh, or Zsh.
You can use apt-get or aptitude.
You can download source and do: ./configure, make, sudo make install.
In other words, apart from the really easy installation, it's not much different from any other distro. It is, after all, based on Debian, so I can't understand Debian fanboys knocking it so much.

The Debian logo is quite nice; it really does give a glow of something...

Gentoo's magmata is probably my favourite logo of all times. (The things people will do to the Canonical one though is close ;P)

But I don't get how Ubuntu is difficult. It's made for simplicity, so obviously if you want to tinker with it you shouldn't consider it for long.

exactly,
thast allmost exactly what i am working towards,
though i intend to stay with gentoo when i habve learned enough to get it working as i want it.
untill then im using suse, but tinkering with it progressivly more and more.

Are you able to come up with anything smarter than that?

P.S.: you didn't answer my challenge.

My first distro was Slackware and I had no problems learning my way around. And today, I am better off because of it. It is like anything else, you have to put forth the effort to get results.