MP3 support
 

My friend (Trackrat) has been going on at me for ages to try LInux,
What I would like to know is if any of the distros support MP3 from the off, as trackrat uses Fedora core 4 and had to download and install RPM`s to get his to work and as I am new to this I would prefer the MP3 side to work from the off.
Later when I have felt my way around and and now a bit more about Linux then I might try something else.

Most of the big distros are not, by law, allowed to have those right off. Unless you pay for it, they are propietary, and like Flash, Adobe Acrobat, and Sun's Java, you will need to install them afterwards. SuSE 10.0 has an "Eval" version for free, which gives all this installed, mind you, this way you don't pay, and the eval doesn't have a trial period. So I would say go with that, or buy any, any you pay for should have all those built in.

With Suse prior to Suse 10.0 the only thing you have to do is installing the Suse media packages. With YOU (the update manager of Suse) this is a piece of cake.
With Suse 10.0 I can't remember how I got mp3 support working, I believe I installed lame via packman (http://packman.links2linux.org/), nothing special too.

Sorry if this is a dumb question but someone has offered me the latest Mandriva release, would that be any good for a newbie or would SuSe be better.
Also where would you get the EVAL version of SuSe?.
Thanks for your answers so far.

Guess where you can get the latest Suse? From the Suse website. Mandriva is a good distro and ships will most multimedia apps. All you would need to do is add libdvdcss (to play encrypted dvd's) and win32 codecs (to play MS media files).

For a Newbie, I recommend SuSE 10.0 eval, you can bittorrent the files, or you can downloads the CDs or a DVD. Up to you how you get it. Either way, SuSE has YAST, a package Manager that makes updating, and installing files and drivers very easy, and avoids the command line far more than other distros, which is just plain convienient too. It also has the best support(retail version) and is manager by Novell, so it is a great quality ditro with all the power, and less of the pain.

Here is fast mirror for downloading DVD image
http://mirror.tamu.edu/suse/i386/10.0/iso/

Thanks to you all for your answers, I am downloading the DVD Eval (2gb), this will take some time.
I shall be back with loads more questions:)

Watch out! You may be downloading wrong image. Correct image has size of 3.4GB but NOT 2GB
http://mirror.tamu.edu/suse/i386/10....VD-i386-GM.iso

Actually, the problem is what he is using to DL it, you need to use an FTP software, as some things cannot see all 4.3 Gb. SO be sure, if yours caps out at 2GB, to use different software.

THanks for that link SlackerLX it is now downloading (3.4gb).

I have downloaded SuSe 10 EVAL and burned it onto a DVD.
So I installed it and so far so good.
As I only installed it last night I have not had time to explore it fully, but I like what i see.
The thing that put me of trying Linux before was the fact that when you look on Linux forums you see a lot of questions concerning things that will not work with linux ie. Scanners, Modems etc.
Apart from my scanner, (which after a bit of research i found no drivers had yet been written for it) everything works.
As I explore, get ready for lots of questions.
Once again thanks for your help.

I have posted some tips at my blog about SuSE and Debian. You also can check the full blog. Not much there. Just archives of 2 months
http://slackerlx.blogspot.com/