Im sure this has been asked a myriad of times but i wanted some advice from "the all knowing community" for myself.

I decided to give linux a try and was recommended Fedora. I am very very comfortable with Windows and hardware so i thought i wouldnt have too many problems.

The install went fine and everything works, but im havign a hell of a time trying to install software. Nothing ever works lol.

Can someone recommend a distro that is easy to use (easy to install software on) and will also not create too many problems if i try to access my NTFS windows drive?

I'm a newb when it comes to linux so please help.

hello,

What are you trying to install?

Distro's that have a easy installation methode? ehm.. Ubuntu (kubuntu), linspire, mephis (so i heard). These are just three.. there are more, no doubt.

NTFS drives are easy to access.. it's even distro independant! search for it on this forum for clues. (tip: edit the fstab file accordingly). Yes i'm not giving the answers right away.. I learned that one learns things by trying it for itself if pushed in the right direction.

Remember though.. NTFS write support is NOT DONE. don't even try it. Reading from NTFS is fine..

Hello.

Choosing a distro is a question of personnal taste.
I like ubuntu for myself.
There are many distros which try to emulate windows out there.
-> www.distrowatch.com

No problem reading NTFS partitions.
Writing NTFS is working well, but at your own risks. NTFS is proprietary, so the linux implementation is based on reverse-engeneering (in other words, guessing).
FAT partitions are older and the linux support is more mature.

You will need to invest some time before you can appreciate the full power of linux. It doesn't work quite like windows and the philosophy is quite different. It is much more flexible and you can do a lot of things with it that you can't do with windows but you need to know how to use it first. Try and scoot, don't give up and you'll enjoy.

Look for distros that use Synaptic for software management and updates. Very easy to use. Blag is fedora based and uses synaptic.
Most Debian knockoffs have synaptic.
PCLinuxOS is Mandriva based and uses synaptic.
Fedora uses Yum. A little reading will get you up to speed.

http://fedora.redhat.com/docs/yum/

Thank you all for your help. I have no problems installing the OS (at least i didnt with Fedora). But problems i had with fedora was for example: i installed the NTFS program and the install went fine but my drives dont show up. Its probably a mistake im making but its frustrating.