I have been choosing which distro I should stick to.. I have tried Fedora, Ubuntu, and Mepis. I find fedora to be the most useful in my case. But I also like Mepis. I have also read that Ubuntu is the most famous. Can you give me your opinion on which distro should I use? Or can you give me a recommendation perhaps. Thanks...

The best is the one used by your nearest linux user or the one you will torture with your questions.

Use what you like best and what works best on your hardware. Of those you've listed, Fedora is my least favorite. That doesn't mean it's bad, though. It just means that I prefer Debian, Ubuntu, or Mepis, all of which are Debian-based distros. Fedora, as I'm sure you know, is an offshoot of RedHat.

Don't forget Mandriva... another excellent distro. Or PCLinuxOS. Or OpenSuSE.

Or my personal favorite... SLACKWARE!

Have FUN!

Thanks for the comments...

I haven't tried Debian yet. Does it also have dependencies? I find the dependencies issue in Fedora to be not so appealing...

What about Mepis? I think it's pretty good. I have done so many things without touching the terminal...

The best Linux distro (for you) is the last one you try......

I have tended to stick with Ubuntu and Mepis, but I recently have been looking at OpenSUSE 10.2--very impressive.

My solution is to keep maybe 4-6 different distros on the machine and jump around and experiment when I have time. Eventually I decide to change the default and move all the files over. For now, default is Mepis6

So far playing with Debian it has taken care of most of the needed dependencies. I did have to use the command line to configure it to setup my nvidia drivers (had optional easy way, but that didn't work with my video card).

Perhaps look at some screen-shots and decide whether you would like to start with a gnome desktop, or KDE and such. I prefer Slackware, but you will have to deal with dependencies and do a bit at the command prompt and possibly compile some of the things you might want on your system.


As far as the best advice, find one you like or the one closest to what you want. Most distro's have live cd's so you can try them out and get a feel for them before installing. Good Luck and welcome to Linux .

Ok, thanks.. I'll try your suggestions...

Nobody can tell you which distro is best for you. The best one is the that works for you, you're most comfortable with, and that you like to use.

It depends on your needs. I like using Debian based distros because I'll have over 18000 packages an apt-get away. MEPIS would be like Ubuntu, but more friendlier to the new user.

I wouldn't recommend Mandriva due to financial issues and buggy software.

But hey, try them all!