Hi LQ,

I have a Compaq Presario 1720IL machine and need to switch to a linux distribution. i have been using windowsXP.

Any suggestions, which linux flavour would be the best for my machine?

I tried rhel3ws, but sound support was missing.

Thanks, any help would be welcome.

go to distrowatch.com and pick the top 10 and try them all out and find which on eyou like

I would recommend you Ubuntu which is very User friendly. (Feisty 7.04)
Other very easy ones are:
Sabayon
PCLinuxOS
Mint

Especially the Sabayon DVD Edition/Ubuntu Ultimate has a lot of Applications preinstalled. That makes the switch from Windows to Linux easier but they are also quite heavy then.

Just a try a few of them as Live CD/DVD and you will see how well they are running.

Moved: This thread is more suitable in Linux Distributions and has been moved accordingly to help your thread/question get the exposure it deserves.

Im not sure I'd consider Sabayon a newbie friendly Distro. IIRC, its based on Gentoo, which is hardly a newbie friendly OS. I'm not a fan of PCLinux, but Mint and Ubuntu are both good for a person learning. Easy package manager, Ubuntu has excellent community support, and generally just about any question can be answered w/ a quick Google search.

I don't consider Ubuntu any "heavier" than any other distro. I've got various versions of Ubuntu running on several PC's that are definitely old(6-800mhz) and they run fine. Mint is an OK distro, but its more or less Ubuntu with restricted codecs installed.

IGF

Yea thats true. If you have any problem with Ubuntu you just use Google and its almost solved in a few minutes. Ok Ubuntu is not a heavy distro but sometimes I just fell that its a bit slower and not as responsive as some other distros.
I just considered Sabayon as User friendly because you have a lot of Supporting interfaces that help you to Configure your Graphic card and stuff like that.

Actually I also use Ubuntu but maybe I will switch to another one. The only Problem with my Laptop is the X1600Mobility which gives me headache.

Colleagues are recommending fedora 6/7.
Whaddya think?

Sure Fedora 6/7 are good distributions too.
I would say you just try it so go and Download the LiveCD/DVD and find out yourself.

I prefer Ubuntu/Debian because I like *.deb packages and the fact that Debian has the most packages in their repository so I don't need to compile. And another reason is that I find help very fast so I can solve problems in about 5 Minutes. But there is also a large community for Fedora and all those other Distributions so u will find Help anyway.

Thanks everyone,
I've obtained a copy of FC6, Ubuntu 7.04 and Sabayon. Am going to try them out one after the other.
Will keep you posted.

Good, wide array of choices there. Unfortunately, I dont think your FC6 CD is gonna be a "Live CD", so you may have to install to try it. Sabayon and Ubuntu, depending on which CD you downloaded, should allow you to run the OS from the CD to try it out.

Fedora is probably my second favorite Distro, but its a Distant second to Debian/Ubuntu..

Good luck!

IGF

I have successfully installed FC6 on my machine. have got ready-made sound support. There was a problem connecting to the internet via pppoe, but its working as of now. will have to reboot and check again if its just a fluke

Everything is still working fine. Lets hope for the best.

Long Live Open Source.....

Linux made by Linus Torvalds and the others. The rest of the software..well, whatever you need. Maybe GPL'ed stuff. LFS.

Don't let the fact that Sabayon is based on Gentoo fool you. Sabayon is generally very user friendly. The only issue I have had, that might confound newbies, is that is doesn't like ATI graphics cards very much. So you used to have to add xdriver=ati on the first boot to get the Live DVD to work. Though support for ATI is much better in recent versions.
A big advantage Sabayon has for the Linux newbie is that it comes with tons of software included. So the need to actually install any extra packages is slight.