Recommended distro for a newbie?
 

:Pengy:
Can someone give me some recommendations for a linux distro for some1 dual booting with windows. I was looking at mandrake 10.1 because from what i was reading it was easy to install, but for some reason it is not detecting my cd-rom which is preventing me from installing it. so what distro should i start with.

1. Simply Mepis
2. Kubuntu Breezy Badger

red hat linux 9 is best for new bie
for good appearence plz use suse

hmm, lets not reccomend Redhat 9 it is outdated and frankly not very good.

If you want a redhat type distro then use Fedora Core (redhat's testbed) or one of the redhat clones: CentOS, whitebox ent. linux

For a newbie?

Try PCLinuxOS and if that doesn't like your hardware try MEPIS.

Both are "LiveCD" distributions that you can run from CD and if you like the look of them you can install them.

They use different hardware detection so one may work where the other one doesn't.

PCLinuxOS: Own repositories with packages built by Texstar. Bang up to date. This can be risky, but personally I have had few problems, none serious.

MEPIS: More conservative software, as it is essentially an easy way of setting up and maintaining Debian. This means that software is a bit dated but stable.