I am an WIN XP USER. I recently partitioned my HD and put Lindows OS 4.0 on the computer. I noticed it some problems finding some stuff, but it was easy to use because of the click and run. (I don't like having to pay for click and run---I think that is not a good feature!!)

I then decided to put Red Hat 9.0 on my computer. My friend bought it and gave it to me. I have all original CD's. I loaded it and all I have is trouble.

First, my sound card doesn't work. "I have to put ALSA on the computer"...Pain in the A$$. I can't figure it out!!! Total pain with a total waste of time.

IT doesn't detect everything!

Just to put LimeWire on is a total pain and everything has to be entered in the Terminal Bash Shell.
Just to get limeWire started I had to install Java VM. NOT a walk in the park!
At least with CNR with LindowsOS, I was able to load LimeWire in GUI style and not have to waste hours learning run commands of linux to use in the terminal. Everytime I have to do something it has to go through the shell, never just a click away.


So my long drawn out question is this. What OS should I go with now? I am looking for something that is supported (Like Windows, but absolutly not Windows) and I can download UP2DATES with. I want a version of Linux that all I have to do is download a program and open it up and click "Install" and thats it. Please weight in and let me know. Thank you.

Well, I use debian (lindows is debian based). Installing software is like "apt-get install foo".
But that doesn't mean debian is necessarily best distribution for you.

<Moral>
Anyways, the shell is a place to do work, and all the time you use there will be paid back later in increased effectiveness. Pointing and grunting to is somewhat barbarian way to interact with the world, anyway, and it has the weakness of being not very suitable for expressing abstract thoughts.
</Moral>

Is SUSE 9.1 the way to go?? Is it more "User friendly" then Red Hat9.0? Is there updates for it?? Is everything I download going to be a pain in the Butt??... Do I need the shell everytime I want to run a program? For example, I really have nothing on my computer expect for LimeWire. When I run it, I need to go to the shell, do <CD /LimeWire>, then <sh runLime.sh>. It like there is not icon to just click. But on my WinXP there is an Icon to just click. Also when I had the Lindows Distrabution on the computer, there was an Icon for it. Plus my sound card worked under Lindows. Is SUSE 9.1 the answer to my questions and problems??

try fedora core 2. its the new direction of redhat. just like redhat 9 but more up to date, maybe your stuff will be detected in FC2. Also Gentoo is a good distro. to install soemthing its just "emerge foo" kind of like debian, but installing it takes soem knowlege. try FC2.

SuSE 9.1 would probably the most user friendly distro(in my opinion) and more up to date that RH 9.0. and SuSE has an updater that is graphical.

imo, mandrake or knoppix would be the best. they both have great auto detection of ur hardware and most of mandrake is point and click

Go for SuSE 9.1

I used if for a while. . . and it rocked.

You will love YaST for setting up your hardware.