I always recommend distrohopping: try a few distros, each one for a few days, and settle for the one you like best. Everybody has different tastes and needs.

There seems to be one every other day, or so (at least), so scrolling back through the newbie forum should yield a fair few...

up to a point...you will find that some things are a bit more tricky than the 'permit everything, until exploits take over the whole world' attitude of some other operating systems, but mostly its a case of approaching the problem from the right direction and then you can do what you really want (but not necessarily in the 'bad' way that you might have done, if you didn't think about it). Of course, with the source code, if you are really determined, you can do anything but some mistakes just aren't worth that much effort.

done deal...firefox/opera/chrome work well and if there is a browser other than IE that you are happy with, you should be happy here

I don't, so I'll pass on that, but, in passing I'll make the comment that often you have to install codecs separately, which is due to license restrictions.

the gimp is a power user tool, which is every bit as difficult to use as, say, Photoshop, but the interface isn't identical (should be as easy or difficult to learn); Gimpshop has an interface patterned around Photoshop, so that might be a more gradual learning curve. That said, krita and some others are worth a look, depending on your requirements.

Pass, again.

spoilt for choice, but the choices tend not to be the very friendly ones, unless you go for the full-house CMS style stuff.

I understand this as referring to the OS and not the apps (tell me if I am wrong).

a few points:

• the first thing that (in an ideal world) you would want to select would be the GUI: often ex-windows users like KDE, but many prefer Gnome (or, say, XFCE). If you knew which GUI you wanted, it would simplify the distro choice a little, but if you don't, that's good too...
• for quite a few distros, you have an easy choice of GUI...well, for pretty much all distros you could change the the user interface, but sometimes it easier than others
• most of the things that you might want to change, initially at least, would be configurations of the user interface, which should be relatively easy
• Only one mention of Live CDs: You can try without installing and so these are a great route for trying out different distros and different user interfaces, without making a commitment

(One other note; for most distros, you'd install and then (maybe) select another UI that you wanted to try and it would grab it off the net for you; in the case of Ubuntu, Ubuntu is the 'Gnome Ubuntu', Kubuntu is the 'KDE Ubuntu', etc. Don't know why they chose this terminology, but it isn't really different as you can install Ubuntu and then grab one of the other UIs from the 'net in pretty much the standard way.)

Err, you're welcome., I think.

This "super" new LMDE does not support new hardware, because it is built around outdated Debian core. Mint is just a wrapper for Debian, line Linux Mint Julia is just a wrapper to Ubuntu 10.10.
Please read here
http://linuxblog.darkduck.com/2010/1...ns-or-how.html

For people who are accustom to using Windows, I recommend trying Linux Mint, Simply Mepis, Vector, or PCLinuxOS. Try a live CD first and see it the distro fits your style. If it does it is easy enough to set a PC up to dual boot into either Linux or Windows.

Personally, I use Simply Mepis as my everyday OS. It is perfect for my desktop OS needs. I have been using it since 2003. Prior to using Mepis, I would run either Debian or FreeBSD on the desktop.

Ubuntu is the best for a begginer

I am also a newbie to the Linux world, and I started with Ubuntu which is very simple to handle and control

For server - CENTOS - widely used in the industry. Especially for LAMP.

For desktop - Ubuntu - Easiest transition from windows. Great user community, documentation and help forums. Vast HCL compared to any other distro.

How do you come to that conclusion? LMDE is built upon Debian Testing, not Debian Stable, and therefore will be a rolling release distribution (at least a kind of it).

I would assume that you had network issues with your machine because of a lack of firmware. That is the most common "error" in Debian, when it comes to network issues. The firmware is not included in Debian because of its licensing politics. Maybe you should have known that, as somebody who tests Linux distros on his blog. By the way, that outdated Debian core will be even newer than the "super-new" Ubuntu-core when Squeeze becomes the new Stable.

Rolling distribution can be fine... in the future...
But I came to the conclusion simply by running the Ubuntu 10.04, Ubuntu 10.10, LMDE and Linux Mint Julia on same laptop and comparing the results. Only 10.10 and Julia have support of firmware, while 10.04 and LMDE does not support it. Why do you think Canonical changed their licensing politics from one release to another?
BTW... that all (and many more) is described in the blog... Every single system I tried is there...

There is not any mention of either Ubuntu 10.04 nor your hardware in that article.
If you review a distro and are getting into hardware-troubles, don't you think that at least mentioning you hardware would be a good idea?
But you must have a super new machine, if it doesn't run with 2.6.32, which is the current LTS-kernel, and therefore was chosen by Ubuntu and Debian for their releases. But that doesn't mean that it will not run on any other machine, so saying it will not support new hardware is plain wrong.

Toshiba L500-19X.
WiFi card Realtek RTL8191SE.
It is supported in 10.10, but not in 10.04.
The laptop is 1y.o. - can't name it very new. 10.04 was released after it was purchased, and I strongly believe that even 9.10 was released when all the components were available for OEM manufacturers.

I totally disagree with you,I am running LMDE as my main computer and have yet to see any problems at all. I have also tried it on BOTH my other computers and again had no issues (computers: laptops, Dell Insipiron 1525,eMachines E625, and an old HP Pavillion tower system). Did you download the correct kernel? as there were 2 released, the first one there was an issue but that was very quickly repaired by Clem and his team.

OK, you are right, for the RTL8191SE, you have to use either ndiswrapper or compile the driver yourself. Both should not have been a big problem, but may be too much for a newbie. Will solve itself at least for LMDE once Squeeze becomes Stable.

Both your laptops are more than 1 y.o. from date of release. Dell comes with Ubuntu or Vista on-board. Mine Toshiba came from Win7 on-board. Therefore, it has newer equipment which is not supported by Debian [yet] -> hence is not supported by LMDE.
To stop discussion, and argue about "wrapper" of Mint for Debian product, please tell me which hardware is currently supported by LMDE and not supported by Debian.


TobiSGD, Ubuntu 10.10 supports the WiFi card. Why should I wait for Debian to support it?

If we look at the very beginning, I told that "super new" LMDE does support new hardware. I have proofed that it is true. At the same time Ubuntu supports the same hardware. It means that "super new" user should better look at Ubuntu, not at "rolling" release of Debian.
Do we still need to argue?
BTW, even 10.10 is not a panacea in some cases.

I know this won't be a welcome comment, but opposing the majority of people here, I can only recommend not to use Ubuntu. Unfortunately, I cannot quote any definite examples, as I tried it about a year and a half ago, and some things may have changed and others I can't remember.

Anyways, for starters, I thought it did way too much for you, of course easing the transition from Windows, but limiting you severely in your choices of configuration. This may be a matter of personal perception, of course, but seeing how I started ten years ago (shit, I'm growing old) on Mandrake, but quickly switching to Slackware for a more open approach, mine may be understandable.

What is not, however, a purely personal issue is that I was not able to get Ubuntu up and running. I do not consider myself an expert of any kind, but I was able to build LFS through extensive reading, which should make installing a so-called user-friendly distro a breeze. However, Ubuntu kept thowing such an extensive amount of errors and annoyances at me (maybe hardware dependent, of course - HP Pavilion dv5-1032eg), that I finally stomped the whole system after two weeks.

In summary, one can say I had nothing but bad experiences with this distro, and I can only recommend not to use it.

Which is where I get to my recommendation: aptosid, formerly known as sidux. The latter is what I installed afterwards; just as aptosid, it is a patch upon Debian Unstable, stabilizing the system and providing scripts for easy access to important tasks such as installing non-free video card drivers. It uses a "rolling release" cycle, so you're always on top, and so far, I had no more than graphical issues with packaged versions of any software provided. (Other than plain Debian Unstable, which is what I left for Ubuntu.)

Of course, this distro requires a bit more of work - the installation process isn't just "point and click", although easily understandable to an intelligent person, chosing packages apt for your personal style requires some thought and reading, and you will have to edit some text config file to make non-standard hardware to work exactly the way you want.

But exactly the last point is also its upside - there are no "user friendly" "tools" constantly complaining about your choices, and you are free to have a system that perfectly fits you. Besides, once you're done configuring, you will have a substancial amount of grasp on your OS, allowing you to easily consider what you want it to do and contain.

Thus, it's up to you which apporoach to take - use Ubuntu, and everything will be provided for you, just like on Windows. After some time and work, the acquired knowledge will allow you to switch to a distro more fitting to your needs. Mine, however, would be to put in the work now, to understand and thus be above your software, and building your system afterwards. The former is easier, the latter is more work, but also more rewarding.

Your choice.