Im a newbie that whants to "convert" to Linux.....

I need something Easy, fast, lots of software and Gnome!!!

and with many developer tools


Please help me

try suse or mandriva for something redhat-based...

and maybe ubuntu for something debian-based...

make sure you try SEVERAL distros and then choose the one you feel most comfortable with... don't rely solely on other people's suggestions...

http://www.mandriva.com/

http://www.novell.com/linux/suse/

http://www.ubuntulinux.org/

just my two cents...

Go to the distro reviews on this forum, and see what others have to say about what they have tried, or as Packard used to say "Ask the man who owns one". Another good source of reviews is at www.distrowatch.com
I second the suggestion that you try to stay with something Debian based, as this will save you a lot of potential headaches when you go to install or upgrade packages. There are numerous distros based on Debian, I use SimplyMepis (which comes with KDE, but Gnome can be easily installed), there are others which use Gnome by default, such as Ubuntu.

I started with Ubuntu and ended up trying no less then 50 others only to go back. Linux is like buying a car and M$ is like buying a diamond. With M$ you only have the one to pick from so it's the best and the worst of it's breed. With Linux, you have a boat load of room to nit-pick it apart. This is a great thing and a shitty thing, it leads to Linuxs seemingly being hard to use, it's a myth but still it's out there. I would do this:

1) Spend no less then 2 hours at Distrowatch.com looking at distros under seach.

2) Don't pick one, pick ten to DL including many live CDs.

3) Plan to install more then one OS and get a feel for what you like.

That said Mepis and Ubuntu could be installed by my 9 year old. Both are good, I LOVE apt-get so I would stick with a deb based system.

GOOD LUCK!

it's also hard to find a distro that will be particularly fast with a ton of software..or an easy installation... kind of like an oxymoron..

red hat is ueasy to update with it's constantly-nagging rhn applet... and god forbit it should get a bug and think there's an available update when there is not.. you constantly have a flashing exlaimation point!! Red hat has a ton of software... but isn't really fast...

SuSE does have a ton of software, and is reasonably responsive.. i imagine that 9.3 will be better because it is to include KDE3.4 which has dramatically increased gui responiveness...

Gentoo and Arch are both very fast , because their packages are more optimized.. however, a Gentoo installation will take a very long time, and you better hope you get all your CFLAGS and USE flags right... ArchLinux has been the fastest of any distro for me... and it's installation isn't too bad, if you use the full CD... but the installation would be a little tricky for a newbie.. once it's setup though, it's easy as pie..