which is better?
which should i buy?

i have got redhat 9.0 beta
and i am a newbie
should i buy redhat 9.0 final
if your choice is redhat

why buy them when you can download them both for free and try them both?

I would have to agree with Micro. For a newbie, RH9 and MDK9.1 are great distros. Download them and have fun.

Avoid Debian and Slackware though, they're awesome distros, but expose the user to a much higher learning curve when coming over from windows.

I think Mandrake 9.1 is better for users who just switched over from Windows. It's control center is a great help for newbies. Red Hat on the other hand has great support all over the net, and if you want a package 9/10 there will be a Red Hat package available.

Debian ... hmm.. I just got into it after using Red Hat for a while and I love it
Debian is not as user friendly as Red Hat or Mandrake and you have to look up things quite a lot if you want to do something you don't know but you can configure it just the way you want and apt-get is great.

I haven't tried Red Hat (except Red Hat 5.0 a long time ago) so I can't comment on that ...

Mandrake 9.1 was a very Windows-like experience. It was the first linux distribution I actually got to work perfectly (my second distro ever, after red hat 5 I returned to windows). The installation has a nice look, and the graphical configuration tools are handy when you're coming from windows ...

Yep, Mandrake's Control Center is great for Windows switchers, it looks familiar and you can get everything configured that way without ever seeing a console.

I think all the above people Mandrake distributors .

----------------HATS OFF------------------

lol

it's an opinion, and I clearly stated I haven't seen red hat
I'm perfectly happy with slackware ... but yeah, I'd recommend Mandrake to anyone who wants an alternative to windows but can't bother to learn a lot about the working of the OS, just because I have seen it and it was very intuitive, coming from Windows...

RedHat 9 is ok, but in my experience Mandrake is more desktop-friendly for noobs, and it seems to be a bit faster (although that could be because I use reiserfs on 'drake boxes).

I've used intensively Redhat 9.0 and Mandrake 9.0/9.1. Redhat , in my case, is far more stable and faster. Don't take this a rule though, every case is a case. Although, I've to say... Redhat has some odd paths, breaking a lot of stantards. It's rpm's are a pain sometimes. For example: - If you have Redhat 9.0 use this rpm, for Redhat 8.0 that, 7.0 the other one. This is painful when you want to upgrade from one Redhat to another...

I miss Mandrake, seriously. I just don't have much spare time to install it right now, but it was good. Slack does the job though and it's my favorite distro. But it's not easy to learn as Mandrake. But once you master it, you've the tools to handle any problem within any Linux distro . But as the post is Mandrake Vs Redhat, I'd say Mandrake for now untill Redhat pick up a line to follow. If Redhat is for newbies, then emacs should not be installed by default. They not really know what they want to do with Redhat, that's the true . Useless, I know, but I would like to add that Mandrake 9.1 has better packing then Redhat (it comes with mplayer, for example) and it's new theme beats Redhat's blue curve. Redhat's install/remove packages program is terrible. Apt-get and synaptic saves Redhat on it though, but you've to have fast Internet to download/install packages.

Well, test both, they both are free . But if you can support and get a boxed version is a nice attitude of you. They both really do, deserve it...