pedroezsa

I have tried mandrake,fedora,and finally till now really like ubuntu. Simple reason,cz it's d most distro used by my collegian,so when there's a problem,simply ask them first b4 googling.

hazel

Depends whether you want little or large.

For large, I'd say Ubuntu because it installs easily, uses apt and is hospitable to varied hardware. Debian may be more stable but it's puritanical about proprietary hardware drivers and my only attempt to install it so far was a failure (I'm planning to try again though now that I'm more experienced).

For little, Puppy because you can embed it in Windows as well as running it live and it has a very friendly, non-threatening desktop. I don't like it myself because you're always root, but for a Windows user that's not a problem; you're safer being root in Linux than being root in Windows.

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"I'm just a little old lady; don't try to dazzle me with jargon!"

Redman

I'd go for CentOS. Usable for any kind of environment (home, work, datacenter) and very stable. Easy installing with the graphical installer.

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tomslick

I voted for openSuse, for a new user.

it is a stable platform, (no crashes for me on my systems)
everything is well laid out (a mature distribution)
installation through yast is easy and strait forward
hardware detection is very good. (got the wifi cards for all 4 computer I tried it on as well as video and sound)
large community + Novell + endless tutorials online
good package management (yast)
yast makes system configuration simple
the openSuse build service has just about any package you need
choice of desktops (KDE 3.5, KDE 4, Gnome 2, XFCE, Compiz, ect.)

Mandriva a well polished distro as well.

The only other linux that might be easier for a beginner (in my opinion) would be Xandros (payed support is a big PLUS for beginners)

Fedora is to bleeding edge for a beginner, you might as well use Red Hat or CentOS

The (U)(Ku)(X)(Myth)buntus are still a little to buggy and unpolished for the beginner (time and patience should fix that). It's like using the Debian unstable branch with a paint job on top of it (okay so everyone can hate me a yell at me for saying that, but it's true). The on the plus side it does have a large community base and good package management.

Oh and what nut would wish Slackware on a beginner. That is just plain cruel!

questio verum

The poll results at this point reflect my newbie experience pretty close. I started using Kubuntu in early July '07, switched to Ubuntu a few weeks later, and had fun with it for the next year. I'd probably still be with it, but events conspired to make me seek out something more security-minded -Fedora 9. I'm surprised Mint hasn't scored higher. It's more or less a spin-off of Ubuntu anyway.

aluminumspleen

My first love was Kubuntu. It's easy to use, looks a lot (on the surface) like a windows machine, so it was not intimidating.

Recently getting more into Ubuntu. Tried PCLinuxOS, which seems to be a popular rival of Ubuntu, but it just didn't quite match up in my eyes.

Puppy Linux is wonderful for a liveCD. I installed it on a memory stick, and it has great hardware recognition. After Vista crashes on my friends' machines, I plug in Puppy, and pull all the files from their HD to an external so they don't lose anything. Very easy and underrated distro, though not exactly a "desktop" distro.