| I believe it depends on the willingness of the beginner.
Example: I started Linux two years ago. I had no idea what I was doing in the beginning, but I was very eager to learn. I decided to throw a plain vanilla Debian testing install onto my 5-year-old Compaq and spent hours configuring it to my needs. I enjoyed it every step of the way.
A friend of mine, even though he was a "techie", just wanted something that worked. I pointed him in the direction of Ubuntu, PCLinuxOS, and Mandriva. He started using PCLOS and loved it. Nowadays he's moved on to openSUSE, but I feel like PCLOS was just what he needed to get started.
It really boils down to what the newbie user wants, as opposed to which distro offers the best. |