In past experience about a couple months ago i began playing around with linux when i picked up suse 9.1 at best buy. I liked suse but it was really buggy with my monitor. and really didnt like the KDE at all and gnome didnt seem to work well with it. I was taking a Linux class in college and using redhat 8 and liked it very much. I tried out Fedora Code 3 and liked it except for one problem. Trying to play any kind of mp3 would not work. Sound was very buggy and for the most part just would not work.

I am trying to find a distro that is current. Will play sound just fine without much tweaking. I have a SoundBlaster Audigy. Also i have an Althon64 so if its available in 64-bit that would be a plus. I mainly just want to use it for playing around trying things out, like getting WINE to work properly so i can play my windows games and other apps on it. Wouldnt mind hearing any pros and cons between some of the top distros either.

Try Blag--it's based on Fedora but includes all sorts of proprietary multimedia codecs.

For the record, there's no such thing as the "best" distro, so anything anyone says here is pure opinion and speculation.

My picks would depend on what you're looking to do with Linux, and how much you want to learn.

1. You just want to use it, have it "just work," and not have to mess with it much.

Go with SimplyMEPIS, or possibly Kanotix. Either one will get you a fully functional install in relatively short order, both are LiveCD's so you can try them out first to see how you like them without installing anything, and installing either will basically give you Debian Unstable. Don't let the "unstable" part throw you; it's still rock solid. I for one prefer Debian-based distros over RPM-based distros. Apt-get is quite amazing, and it will keep your system up to date and allow for incredibly easy installation of just about any Linux software you could imagine.

You could also just try to install Debian itself, but the installer is a bit harder for a newbie. The new Sarge installer is leaps and bounds easier to use than the old installer that shipped with Woody, but it's still a bit touchy. MEPIS also has a lot of "non-free" addons for sound, video, and web plugins to make things "just work" right out of the box. With any other distro, you'd have to hunt for them. Obviously, as a Linux newbie, you'd probably prefer to have things right there without having to sift through unfamiliar territory to find them.

2. You want to be a l33t h@XX3r, d00d!

Go with Gentoo. Often considered the "ricer" distro, Gentoo is actually quite good for teaching you about how Linux works. It's far more difficult for a newbie to work with than SimplyMEPIS or Kanotix, but that's not the point. By forcing you to compile everything from source, Genoo will teach you about different options, how things work together, and how to troubleshoot various problems. It's also extremely well documented, so if you're patient and keep plugging away you should be able to get it to work well.

You'll likely not want to stick with Gentoo permanently (unless you REALLY enjoy spending days on end watching lines of compiled code scroll by, or honestly consider a .000000000003% speed increase from having a totally riced ou..erm..."optimized" system to be worth the extra weeks of compiling), but it will give you a firm base from which to explore Linux.

3. You keep hearing about this Slackware thing, and want to try it.

Unless you enjoy PAIN, and lots of it, forget it. You'll never get it to work. Stick to the beginner stuff. Move up to Slackware after you become l33t.

Hope this helps.

Linux is tweaking anyway
u cant get best linux w/o tweak it. btw u can try xandros its work can be good for normal user
but not for advance linux users

see how i tweak my linux

http://img294.imageshack.us/img294/4062/wufs8bd.png

I recommended Blag because the OP seemed to like Fedora except for the MP3 support--Blag has that support built in.

Yes, for newbies, I usually recommend Mepis, but since the OP preferred Gnome to KDE and seemed to like Fedora, I thought a Fedora-based distro would be more appropriate. Blag also comes with Synaptic Package Manager (even though it's RPM-based).

[Insert obligatory "I-don't-understand-why-people-say-Slackware-is-hard"-rant here]

The latest Ubuntu version is released these days. It can be set up to multimedia with the guide at UbuntuGuide - it is also released in a 64bit version.

True Slackware may not be for the timid BUT if you want something that just works then Slackware is for you.

one thing i really hate about these 'best distro' questions: the threads end everytime in some kind of minor flame war....
we all have our own oppinion, we all have a distro, or a few, we like most...
but this does not help anybody!just because we like it, does not mean it will help anybody else using it! is there not a page where some distroes are listed? perhaps we should add some OBJECTIVE pros and cons to each distro, not stating we like it, but stating WHAT we like about it and what is a negative feature.
i know it will not completley get rid of these threads 'best distro for x' but will perhaps it will stop some of the (minor) flamewars created by these threads.

generally the thing with linux is to never give up and to learn how to find solutions of any issues occuring (this does not mean 'post a thread everytime you have probs' it means 'know how to find a solution yourself' if you then still have trouble post a thred).
never giving up also means: if you do not like linux because distro x is not easy to handle for you... try another distro. sooner or later you will find something you enjoy and that you can handle and you will fall in love with linux and never want to get rid of the system again :-)

Well, I had Mandrake 9.1 when I first started on Linux then switched to Gentoo. Gentoo install is a bit rough but once you get it installed, it is a dream. I had a lot of probelms trying to keep Mandrake updated, it was a nightmare and it was buggy on my machine to boot. Then I hated 9.2 to boot.

I have not tried some of the others mentioned here so I can't say they are bad, but Gentoo is very well documented and has one heck of a install guide. You WILL learn a lot during the install, especailly the kernel. I didn't learn anything about Mandrake during the install, well, I learned there is a lot of files being copied over.

If you try Gentoo, remember that the tab key will help you when typing in those commands. It will save you a LOT of typing. I installed Gentoo on a Quad CPU server the other day and it was a lot easier using that tab key. Yes, it sees all four CPUs and it works really well. I run folding on it for the LQ team. I just have to get it to run four sperate folding units, one for each CPU. Also, check out the Gentoo forums. Search FIRST, then ask. They are picky about that. Don't ask how I know.

Good luck with whatever distro you choose. Hope you love Linux. This from a guy that doesn't have windoze at all and never did either.

Later

The best Linux distribution is the one that you can use for all your needs...

I don't have an opinion about your Linux distro, but you want one about mine,
since you asked. Slackware has been a good, but difficult, learning experience
for me. I recently tried Vector Linux SOHO-5.0.1, which is based on Slackware,
and think it might be one for you to try. It's quite easy to setup, and there is
a lot of stuff ready to go once it's installed. All Linux distros are going to have
things that don't work without tweaking. For that matter, when you install a
Windows OS it will have more hardware not detected on most boxen, and also
less programs than a Linux distribution. Vector doesn't have 64-bit support,
yet. You might also want to checkout Frugalware, which is also based off of
Slackware and does have 64-bit support.

You might also want to try QEMU for running Windows applications inside your
Linux distribution. I am using it now, and you definitely need a computer with
muscle. For instance, I'd get a CPU speed of at least 1.5 Mhz, with an L2 cache
of at least 512K, and at least 1GB of RAM, preferably PC2700 or greater. With
that type of hardware, and using the kqemu accelerator, you get about half
the native Windows performance. In my limited experience, Wine is a joke. It
will not run PageMaker 7.0, Photoshop 7.0, or some other applications that I
need.

Use the search, Luke! You'll find that with Google, and also all over the place
here at LQ.

Which is why insteading of just recommending Kubuntu (which I use) or Mepis (which is my play-around distro), I recommended Blag--not because I use Blag right now but because the OP indicated a liking for Fedora, which Blag is based on, but with MP3 support, which Blag has.

I know some people like to just say, "Use what I use. It works great for me." I try my best to be objective and actually listen to what the user wants. Kubuntu works great for me, but I don't recommend it to everyone.

There are two websites I recommend when newbies ask "Which distro?" and show no particular leanings:

http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=major
This has a list of the top ten distros at DistroWatch and a brief summary about each.

http://www.zegeniestudios.net/ldc/
This is a quiz that takes your answers to various questions and suggests a couple of distros that may work for you.

Hmmmm, isn't there something like that here on LQ?? http://www.linuxquestions.org/reviews/index.php?cat=2

Hmm thats odd that redhat crashed on you like that. I remember i was using RedHat 7.2 to run an opennap server (public napster type) with 1000 users and a webserver with 300 hits+ a day and i had it stable has hell. Not one problem in 5 months of straight uptime with the odd restart.

Since you have the most expierence with red hat/fedora based distros, I would stick with them for the time being.

The thing is you will most likely try several distros until you find the one thats best for you.

And don't let anyone tell you a distro is too hard. They are all easy, they just take different levels of dedication.

Netizen