hi, i am new to this board and new to linux in general. i would like to know which distro i should use that is user friendly as in for someone who has never used a command line in my life. i am computer literate but when it comes to programming i am lost. i want to use linux because of the programming and development involved in using it as i would like to enter a computer related field in college, so i was thinking this could help me. plus i am a bit tired of using windows. i used a live cd of ubuntu before and was a bit impressed, but i was wondering if there are other distros that would be better. sorry for the long post, but any help would be appreciated

Hi
I ll recommend Opensuse 10.3 it is user friendly and it offers a lot
of packages,you just find the dvd and am telling you you will like it!
I have been using it for two years and for me i think it is the best os i ever used!i tried a lot of distros but finally end up on opensuse.
OpenSuSE is a distro which has been constructed by skilled developers and is really something to try it out.
Good luck........

I just bought a new PC (AMD64) three months ago and have been installing Ubuntu 7.10. It is a great distro. Everything else can be installed easily thru' Synaptic Package Manager.

Then one day when I updated the kernel, my NVidia driver failed to function. Then I have to uninstall the ubuntu nvidia driver (which is not supported) and reinstall the driver.

So Ubuntu is great for Open Source software but some commercial drivers are not supported and you have to be careful.

If you are good, then try Arch Linux. I tried the 64 bit version. It's by no means user friendly. To get user friendliness, probably someone have to pay Arch developer as what the South Africa billionaire did for Ubuntu. After installing the Based ISO, one has to modified /etc/rc.conf and /etc/pacman.conf to connect to network and use pacman to synchronise with the Arch server. Check Arch Linux Wiki site http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Main_Page for more details.

It is user friendly to the right people, user friendly doesn't have to mean that everything is done for you. Also, paying the developers probably wouldn't change anything. Arch is exactly what the developers want it to be, it is perfect for those who use it, it isn't tying to be another Ubuntu and the developers don't want it to be.

If you want a nearly transparent OS, then Arch may be for you, if you want all of the workings covered up and everything done for you, then you should be looking somewhere else.

I agree. Arch is certainly designed for those with a fair bit of expereince in mind.
Other than Ubuntu, try SimplyMEPIS or PCLinuxOS; they've both got KDE as the default GUI, which is probably easier to use for people migrating from Wi*dows.

Best of Luck

I think you should try ubuntu. It is the easiest between the distros I 've tried. I started with slackware 11 (kinda hard. you learn some basic stuff but i wouldn't recommend it as a first distro), then tried suse 10.2 before moving to debian for a while and finally end up with ubuntu..
Probably it is as easy as windows.

slackware is using kde and no package manager
suse is using rpm package manager
ubuntu is using gnome and apt as a package manager

Whatever distro you end up with you 'll love it!

Every linux distro is designed by wonderful people who has different taste on it. You should looking lot of information on it. Generally, distros are same. Its works are same. So, you need to look up which distro that your friend use, because if you have a trouble, you can ask them.