Linux newby and sabayon 3.4f
 

Hi,I'm a another ex, windows only, point and clicker,never used a command line,I have tried several live cd distro's, they all seem good to me. Sabayon looks really classy but is it going to be to advanced, should I stick to something like kbuntu 7.10, suse 10.3 or mandriva 2008

Thanks:)

Welcome to LinuxQuestions. If you like Sabayan best of what you have tried then I suggest that you use Sabayan.

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Steve Stites

I would put distros in 4 broad classes:

1. Mainstream--relatively complete and user-friendly--eg (*)ubuntu, PCLOS, SUSE, Fedora
2. Purist--all compiled, no dependency checking, mostly command-line: eg Slackware, Arch, LFS, Gentoo
3. Niche--special purpose--eg DSL for low-resource machines
4. Other--a LONG list of distros that are just tweaks of something else--and many of which have little to offer that you cant get in the first 3 categories. Look at distrowatch to see this picture.

Sabayon is based on Gentoo. Their claim to fame is that everything is compiled. (They call it "emerging" to make it sound less intimidating.) Try "emerging" Scribus or Firefox on Sabayon or Gentoo before you fall in love with either. Hint: It takes the definition of "coffee break" to new dimensions.

One thing previous posters don't seem to be considering is what you said about being completely new to Linux. I would recommend a "popular" distro, where "popular" means that lots of people are using it.

The advantage you get here is that most of the problems you will face have been solved by someone else. Also, if you have a very specific question, someone with an identical distro can try to duplicate the problem.

Last night I installed Ubuntu on this laptop so that I can help more Ubuntu users (they are crawling out of the woodwork). As I was installing it, I discovered that I had a wireless interface that is not very well supported. Lots of people had posted problems getting that interface to work. Now that I have gone through the pain of figuring out a solution to the problem, all those other people can benefit from my experience, and people who have the problem in the future can benefit.

After you've spent some time with a "popular" distro, you will feel a lot more comfortable experimenting with a less common one. And when you have problems with the less common distro, you will not stress out as much because you have already cut your baby teeth and are ready for real meat.

Yes - especially when blockages occur - see this recent thread for what you might face.Yes - pick any one.