best linux Distro? preferably FREE
 

okies :newbie: question here.. i know and i apploogize... okies here it be. what would be the best linux distro around? i mean as far as FREE goes and as far as compatability well lets say it me? a guy who has had linux about a week now and is getting the hang of things but wants things neat and organized and also simple but more of a challenge than WinBlow$... we i guess what i am trying to as is what linux distro is the best as far as for a noobie...

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let me just say that this question does not just pertain to those above... i.e. some ppl may think that my question is what is the best distro from the above pole... the above list. is pulled from http://www.linuxiso.org
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okay so if anyone could at least post their comments and their "reviews" or "pros/cons" if you will for different distros that would be good for educational purposes but poses a challenge NOTE: by educational i don't mean school-wise, but Xploration-wise

and please also note that i would want something that boots into GUI. sorry not that advanced yet. i am good with DOS. but that is different....

oy, this question is asked too often. http://distrowatch.com/

anyways, you might want to consider changing the poll a little. freebsd is not linux, and just saying "fedora core" is probably enough. also, i haven't heard of someone using turbolinux in forever. maybe you should restructure your poll (delete some entries that are problematic) and add a few more popular ones.

don't be surprised if a moderater shuts this down....

just do an LQ search for "best distro" and you'll find people have done this before. anyways, the answer to "best distro" is that it's your personal preference.

nevertheless, i might consider voting in this if you change it a little.

don't take this the wrong way, just some suggestions....

While I use both Suse 9.1 and Slackware...I like/use Slackware 90% of the time...it gives me more controal which I like and I think better uses my hardware to its full potental

by the way, i can pretty much guarantee slackware will win the poll. most of the people on LQ use slackware and/or highly respect it.

Slackware is great, but you forgot Gentoo, which would be a great heir to the throne :D. In the future, please try to do a search, as this question has been mentioned too often.

blah, i got bored and voted anyways.

like i said before, slackware will probably win. i would normally vote slackware, because for what you're looking for, it is a good newbie linux learning experience.

however i voted freebsd, even though it's not linux. i voted it because 1) slackware is going to win anyways 2) freebsd is amazing 3) ports are the best thing ever invented 4) you learn a lot about your OS and spend a lot of time at the command line (its fun though!) and 5) it's really secure and stable.

If you want the best Distro for a newbie, then i suggest you start with Mandrake,

i thank you for the input... i have tried slackware. but it is command line... i was scared and i went to SuSE 9.1. i liked it... is there any SlackWare that is GUI? or is there a command like in DOS type win. and there ya go... i mean command line i KNOW don't get me wrong i know command line is soooo much more powerful but GUI is my safety zone. i am learning some commandline by using Xterm to unpack packages so slowly i am workign on it. but thank you for the input. keep it comin. and sorry i actually did do a LQ search by clicking "has this been asked b4" and i didn't pull that much. i only assumed it had been. one of you mention Gentoo? how is that? and i havn't tried mandrake. i used Redhat b4 ... not a big fan. but i thank you.

"startx"

did you read what i said above?

I started with mandrake and got annoyed with it, now I am using SuSE and find it good for me, I am moving over from Windows

I started using slack.. but it was not for me.. so I changed to mandrake and were there for awhile, I tested SuSE but it missed alott of things that mandrake had so I changed back.. I tested gentoo, a great distro, alittle hard to install tho.. but right now I'm sitting in Debian, and it is there my vote goes, Debian!

There is a section called 'Reviews' on this website. I think that anybody with a genuine interest to find out which Distro is the best would read those first before posting such a oft-repeated question.

2 months ago I had a big failure (bye bye partition table) when running slackware, here I took the oppurtunity to try out this gentoo thingy as an experiment, since I had a nice clean machine. It was only meant to be a temporary thing but after 2 months I'm sticking with gentoo. So my vote goes too gentoo (though slackware is a very close second, if only it used portage)

yes i will deffinately check out the reviews section. i heard the gentoo was mostly complie everything you want to use as a program. and how is debian? is it GUI? how is the install? i know there are alot of disks that go with the newest release as far as linuxiso.org goes.