Hi,

I am new to linux, in fact never installed it before and used very scracely, have always been afraid of it.
I own a Macbook Pro and as everyone says, use it to learn, I thought it as a good way to start learning.
But there are so many distributions and flavours, I am confused where to start and what is the best for me as a beginner.

Regards,
Aroosa

The difference between Distros is that for some of them there is a company behind their development and releases. I mean companies like RedHat, Canonical, Novell, Oracle etc. These distros come with tools that the company in charge considers are the tools you would need in an enterprise environment.
Some other distros are Community supported and they come prepacked with whatever tool that community considers necessary for the user.

One important difference between is the way each distro install software in your computer and the format they use. The two main are RPM (RedHad and its derivatives) and .deb (Debian and its derivatives) They all have text base tools (Command line) and graphical tools to install applications in your computer

They all are very user friendly if you have been using them for tree years, but from the beginning Linux Mint, Ubuntu, and OpenSuSE are ranking high for friendliness

Once you have decided what distro you would like to install, you will have to do a search on how to install them in a Macbook and follow the steps.
Remember to back up all the important files before you do any changes to your system. Or you can get a different hard drive and use that to do the installation, so you can always go back to your orignal settins by putting back the old hard drive.

You can install any distro and tweak it the way you like.

good luck to you

1 members found this post helpful.

Thanks for a detailed reply TroN, and I like the suggestion of using a seperate drive.

Regards,
Aroosa

If you're completely new to it, I'd start with a distro like Kubuntu, OpenSUSE with KDE, or Mint with the MATE desktop, all of which will give you a solid usable install with an evironment that is reminiscent enough to Windows/MacOS that you won't be lost at first. By sticking with a mainstream distro you will find many more answers and get better results than if you go with more of a fringe one. There are guys here who like to talk up more do-it-yourself distros like Slackware or Arch, but the truth is those can be much more frustrating to a new user, as they require much more specialized knowledge to configure and maintain.

i've been using linux for two years now and i started on ubuntu its easy to install easy to use or if you dont like that i would also suggest fedora 17 kde or gnome witch-ever desktop you like beter

If you would like to try a smaller distro to start out with, I can recommend PeppermintOS highly. It was my first try at Linux and I found it very manageable. The forum is quiet, but there is always somebody to answer questions. There is also a good collection of simple tutorials there, which I still use to this day. Peppermint is released once a year and the coming release, Peppermint Three, is scheduled for July 23 or 24. Best of luck whatever you choose.