Hows everyone, i would like that someone could tell me, if mephis 8.5
is a good idea to get started as a newbie in linux.
Whats the best option??

Sure. If Mempis 8.5 appeals to you, then go for it

I am a kind of newbie too, I researched it and if you want desktop best experience you can get is Ubuntu they say, there are laptops being sold with ubuntu installed on them.

But if you are starting a server experience go for Debian, documentation is very rich in many areas you can learn quicker.
and they say it is very reliable with many commonly used packages like control panels and other webhosting stuff.

I hope it helps. Good luck..

Mepis is Cool. Community is nice. Mepis 11 will be coming out soon. Kantoix is pretty cool also.

"Whatever floats your boat, dude!"- Rajesh Koothrapalli

Everybody is going to tell you that their favourite distro is "the best". Try a few and make your own choice.

it all depends on what you want out of Linux. If you want a system that requires barely any Linux knowledge, and mostly works out of the box, go with Ubuntu. If you want a system that does what you want it to do and is very stable, even if it means lots of configuring, without traditional GUI tools, go with something like Slackware, or Arch.

http://distrowatch.com is a great place to help you decide.

There is no best Linux distribution for general usage. Just pick one that suits you.

The best distro for you is the one you like the best.

If you are a complete linux newb, try a few different live disks.

Try distros with different default desktops Kde, Gnome, Xfce, lxde, etc
They all have their strengths and weaknesses, and there will always be
some learning curve, how steep depends on the distro, check distrowatch.

Distrowatch also has many links to independent reviews for each distro.

My suggestion is to just play around with a distro, if you find a feature you
dislike, boot up a different distro to see how they deal with that feature.

Whatever you like now, may well/will probably change.

Troll Alert!

Don't post useless info

To OP
If you got the time to try out a few this is what I would recommend. Download, burn and install ubuntu latest version. Install virtual box and try out other Linux distros inside it. All though virtual box has its limitations it will give you a good idea on how the distros work. Please note there is no real 3d support in vbox. But from my experieces if you don't like compiling your own software then ubuntu, opensuse, fedora are some great choices.

Good luck to u

You've not see the RHEL Docs, Fedora Docs, CentOS Docs, or Solaris Docs have you?

There's many reasons to pick a learning OS. Ideally, once you get past the point of learning about Linux, that you really will get picky on what Kernels you load and which packages you wish to run with that kernel.

Me Personally, with the Support that I get from Red Hat, prefer Red Hat/Fedora systems that base package management on RPMs. I don't mind compiling, but I've installed so many systems it gets annoying after 100+ times compiling packages... Sitting and waiting. Good eye candy for your friends to go, "whoa" when they have no idea whats taking place... lol.

You know it's pretty bad when you have to write a shell script and store it on a flash drive to automate package installations for your first 30-40 packages because you know you'll use them on the next build. I might try working on setting up a SpaceWalk/Anaconda/tftp server on a bootable USB drive to be able to take automated installations with me.

My favorite distro is Fedora.

But OpenBSD is the best.

For a beginner -- Ubuntu is a great distro to start on. For an intermediate Slackware and Fedora. For an expert such as myself, I use Windows. (smile, that was a joke)

Not a Linux distro.

Yeah, Ubuntu's OK. Slackware's OK for beginners, too.
Windows ME, that's what all 1337 H4xx0rs use (seriously ).