What is your favourite newbie distribution?
what do you think is easiest to start with?
what is the easiest to setup?

thanks!

Seriously, this question is asked over and over. Check out our Review section, www.distrowatch.com and www.linuxiso.org and you'll see stacks of opinions.

Also search LQ, as I said, it's asked so many times it's stopped being funny.

Mandrake and Red Hat/Fedora. SuSE is supposedly fairly easy to install too, but it's an FTP install.

I've been using RedHat 9 for a week and have no complains so far.

This has been asked many times, and there's no definitive answer. I'm all for Mandrake, even though I have to admit I haven't tried either Red Hat/Fedora or Suse. My first installation of Mandrake 9.2 (without a hint of knowledge about Linux) took a full fifteen minutes and everything worked right away. Couldn't be easier (I actually had to do way more work whenever I installed WinXP). Still, I would suggest reading up on Linux a bit, particularly about filesystems and hard-drive partitioning and doing at least that part manually, if nothing else.

Slackware 9.1 -- as easy as stealing a candy from a baby!

I Like Fedora core x

- kartik

Personally I used Mandrake my first time (bout a week ago ). Tried Debian before that, terrible for noobs. Never tried RedHat/Fedora, SuSe or any other variant

PLEASE do not tell a noob that slackware 9.1 is "easy" or even hint that it is "noob friendly" because it is not. It is for "SEASONED LINUX VETERANS" as the website will tell you.

The thread is from someone who has 3 posts and obvously wants to find a noob friendly distro. The poor guy's eyes will probably come out of his head if he installed slack since he wouldn't have a clue what to do.
Slackware is for people who really know what they're doing with the command line, not noobs.

Noob friendly: Mandrake 9.1, suse 9.0, redhat 9

Regards,
RANDON

naaaa, it doesnt matter if its a newbie or an expert. My friend who ddnt know anything abt linux liked slackware for the first time itself!
It all depends on the attitude towards learning.

Questions is asked over and over, but give Suse 9 a try ... I liked it over RedHat 8. I'm going to give other distros a shot in a month or so.

- Vikram

Knoppix was an easy install and pretty easy to configure also

I started with Mandrake (7.2 I believe). That lasted about a week. From what I've read here on LQ, I tend to believe that Mandrake has made some vast improvements in the user friendly department....that or I had that one lone rogue copy that wanted to be a rebel.

I've tried other flavors, but after trying Redhat, I stuck with it. I'm running Fedora Core 1 now, and like it a lot. Everyone has an opinion, and if you were to ask mine, it would be to try several flavors out and see what you like.

I wouldn't suggest Fedora right off the bat as it is more of a sponsored project rather than a supported distro. Mandrake 10, Redhat 9.0...something like that where you can still get some support (although I heard today is the end of support on RH9.0) might be the way to go until you get a feel for Linux.

Hope this helps.

Nyte

Red Hat 9 has been very easy so far.
I tried other versions 7, 8, but this one seems to stand out on ease of installation and recognizing all the hardware.

no compaints from here.
Two thumbs up.

I would recommend Fedora. Then go to this website and buy the book which takes a newbie step-by-step through each facet of Fedora.

http://www.nostarch.com/nongeeks.htm