What is the best Distro for a newbie
 

Hi, I'm a Linux newbie, and I was wondering what is the best distro. I want one with a good GUI, and I want it just for a personal desktop/workstation.

I'd say Mandrake or SuSE.

I'd make another vote for Suse. Just my opinion.

newbie distro
 

Just loaded fedora core 3 on a sony laptop, and everything was seen and works.

I perfer Slackware for it's crisp response, but to get started, fedora core 3 should be considered.

another vote
 

I found SuSE easier to install, but I recommend SuSE or Mandrake, as well.


-ghazz

Slackware ;) ...but seriously, SuSE

He is kidding about slackware, very mean to newbies (I know). I'm in the same boat as you.

I've only gotten 1 distro to work, redhat9, and aside from the internet connection difficulty, it works great. Plus, it has the best screensavers you will ever find. Ever.

The first distro I ever used was Gentoo (stage 1 install). That was like being thrown straight into hell, though. I wouldn't recommend it for beginners.

I would go with SuSE also. However don't let these guys scare you Slackware is really a pretty easy system to get up and running.

I'd reccomend taking a look at ubuntu. You can download it or they'll send you a free cd. You can run the livecd distribution without disturbing anything and then install it if you like it. Check it out at http://www.ubuntulinux.org

It ran and set itself up quite nicely on my computer. The only problem I had was with my adsl connection but that was a nightmare on anything I tried.

I suggest you try it out just to see if you like it. It'll also give you a good feel for gnome (while most distros excluding redhat use kde). Hope that helps you some!

~Deki

I wan't trying to be mean, sorry if I came across as it. Slack is just notorious for being difficult to newbie. But I did start with Slack, and i think it make me learn, more, faster.

Mandrake is the best for newbies...then maybe you can shift to SuSE lateron

I Believe that FEDORA CORE 2 or CORE 3 is the most easiest on newbies!!!

Mandrake and redhat are easy, i never tried Suse my first distro was redhat 7.2 but the two distros that gave me the best learning experience were Slackware and Gentoo so if you want to learn i recommend these two if you want to use it like you used to do with M$ Windooowz try Mandrake

I recommend SuSE. It is easy to install and work with.