Hi,

And to add one more, pretty complete and very 'understandable', is this one: http://www.tuxradar.com/newtolinux

Kind regards,

Eric

That is not true anymore. They have changed the base of the XFCE edition to Debian and will do the same with the Fluxbox edition. They may change the other community editions, but currently no decision is made about that. Have a look at the FAQ on this page.

Hi,

I don't quite understand what you mean. Aside from the normal Linux Mint versions they have a LMDE (Linux Mint Debian Edition) which includes Gnome and some time ago they also provided one with Xfce which has the same base, Debian testing. Could you clarify a bit on what you mean with 'not true anymore'?

Kind regards,

Eric

Ubuntu and its offshoots are about as simple as you can get...or at least I thought so until I came across Doudou Linux.

LMDE that is based on debian testing is neither stable nor newbie friendly. Just have quick look at lmde forums, i was shocked to find so many people with limited linux knowledge stuck at command line after an upgrade. LMDE might be easy to install but maintaining the system is a different thing. Things break often, upgrades are daily - nothing what a stable, user friendly distro should be. It's an admirable goal to be a stable rolling distro but lmde is still far away from that.

Did anyone pointed to Fedora yet? Or Pardus?

And many more to chose from... just read reviews available, download it and run in Live mode without installation.
Whatever you feel like your home - go on with installation.

I think one problem with questions like "what is the simplest Linux" is that simplest has many interpretations. Simple to me implies a working keyboard, mouse, sound, display; printing, wireless, and webcams should be, to borrow a phrase formerly used by Microsoft, plug-and-play. To some users, simple requires the ability to play mp3s and DVDs without any tweaks (Fedora fails here, but adding the rpmfusion repositories is an easy fix).

Should a newbie start with a stable but conservative, slow-moving distro (Debian, CentOS) or go for a fast-moving, bleeding-edge distro (Fedora, Ubuntu, Arch, etc...)? My personal approach to learning Linux was something on the order of fix it until it breaks, but I realize not everyone would like to go that route.

FWIW, I'll go on record as recommending Fedora.

I just meant you statement that all versions, except LMDE, are based on Ubuntu. As you can see from the link I provided the Fluxbox edition will also change to Debian Testing as base, and the other community editions may eventually follow. I just wanted to correct that.

Hi,

Thanks for the clarification, I was incomplete on my statement as you mentioned.

Kind regards,

Eric