best distro for begineer
 

Hi all, just need some advice about which version of linux is best for a total newbie. iv been looking at FEDORA CORE3 but not too sure. Thanks

This is a question that gets asked a lot... search the threads.

That said - you should go with whichever distro you can get a book to go with - the "for dummies" titles are useful for total beginners since they are easy to understand and you'll get into the thick of things very very fast.

Failing that, something very popular and mostly automatic. Fedora core is a good choice. SuSe and Debian get good reviews too. Honestly tho, that book is indespensible for rapid advancement.

You can read Distro Reviews here.

Fedora Core 3 is fine. You could also try Ubuntu or Mepis which are Debian-based and are highly recommended by other newbies. Mandrake is also highly recommended by many newbies.

It really depends on what YOU want. Do you want an "automatic" type distro that does everything (almost) for you, or do you want something that you can learn about Linux with?

While the auto distros aka newbie distros are easier to install and use initially, you tend to learn less about Linux using them. Mepis and Ubuntu are pretty popular.

Any of the 'newbie' distros will work if that's what you are looking for.

If you really want to learn about Linux, I'd suggest trying Slackware, Gentoo (long compile times), or Debian.

Slack is the most 'unix-like' of the distros. No automatic configuration tools, very stable and fast (assuming you configure correctly). Some third party package management tools, but better to do manually to avoid problems.

Gentoo. Source based distro, very stable and fast (assuming you configure correctly. Everything is compiled on your box so installation can take a long time (usually a couple of days). Fantastic documentation and package handling.

Debian. Very good package management. Huge software repositories, but apps are usually behind what's current. Solid distro.

I got started with Mandrake 9.2 and moved on to 10. As has been said before, it is an almost automatic install and setup. However, once you get it running you can dig into it behind the gui and learn more about linux. I personally find it a good distro that works well for me.