Finding a good distro
 

I am new, but have played with Linux on and off again over the years. Looking for a good distro that must have:
-I prefer smaller community distros, the smaller the better
-Not Ubuntu-based
-Relatively easy to use for beginner or intermediate users

I plan to learn programming and do web browsing and video watching. I also need one to fit on a virtual machine, my host is 8GB RAM.

SalixOS and Bohdi come to mind. Both are smaller, but both had demonstrated some staying power over the years.

Hi.

Most of the "top distros" put out a netinstall then you can add what you like, e.g: Openbox, Window Maker &c... if you have room or just sometime checkout fiveish, free. ;)

Have fun! :)

Those sound like great options. Also, I'd like a UI that I can customize to look like Windows Vista Aero Glass.

KDE is my first thought (especially for customization) but if your going to split the RAM maybe Xfce, LXDE, JWM, etc. plus most top ones can do that.
More examples*:
http://distrowatch.com/search.php
https://www.linux.com/news/software/...ments-for-2016

Very good choice. ;)

Welcome to LQ,

It is great to see people trying on Linux.

Try to look at Slackware. Many people will tell you it is not exactly for beginners. But you can learn a lot with Slackware. It is lightweight on your resources, very fast and comes with lots of software in-built. You get a lot of development software, compilers and libraries.

http://docs.slackware.com/slackware:slackware
http://docs.slackware.com/slackware:install
http://www.slackware.com/
http://docs.slackware.com/start

Plus, you can use either KDE or XFCE. Both are very customizable. You will go crazy over the amount of things you can modify about the look and feel of KDE.

And if you want additional software for Slackware:
https://slackbuilds.org/
http://www.slackware.com/~alien/

Enjoy your Linux experience.

No Linux is really good for beginners? Let me reparse that. It doesn't really matter, this something for beginners Linux distro? They all have a learning curve, just like Windows does when one has never used a computer. If you've used Windows, then you're just adding to your knowledge base of how to operate an Operating System (OS). Like the prior person said, Slackware is an excellent Linux distro to start out on!!! :D If you can master Slackware, which is not that hard actually. Then you can pretty much handle any other Linux OS out there. :D

My vote is for Salix, very much like Slackware, as it is based on Slackware but certainly easier to learn and use.
-Not Ubuntu-based ??? I don't use ubuntu myself for various reasons, but I do use and enjoy Lubuntu.
To each his own. And welcome to the forum;)

I like Salix (as you can see) but I also like PCLinuxOS. Not for myself, as I don't like KDE, but it's very user-friendly and specifically aimed at the home user. I do think a distro should have some idea of why it exists, like Salix being (as they say) for lazy Slackers. You can, of course, program on anything. I don't have any idea of what Windows whatever looks like, but KDE is pretty adaptable: if that can't do it, nothing can.

If you want Debian based, MX-15 is a great distro with very, very good support and modern packages even though it's based on Debian stable.

http://www.mepiscommunity.org/mx

Close enough?

http://i.imgur.com/jtKqaoJ.jpg

Small but mighty team based on Debian Stable. No systemd just like in Salix (I run both, but my screen shot is not Salix)

http://antix.mepis.org/index.php?title=Main_Page

Have fun.

As some others have stated:

SalixOS or Slackware

or

antiX/MX

Slackware
LinuxFromScratch
Gentoo
Arch
===
GET YOU SOME!

@Habitual,

I wish you would stop recommending these "beginner" distros!

+1 for antiX and MX-15

Phones LQ\google, a netinst can build exactly what any ":newbie:" would want. ;)