Linux Distro Advice Wanted

[Faileas]

I've decided to proceed with dual-boot OS, so guess I should pick a distro. Been looking into this and right now leaning towards either Xandros, Fedora, or Ubuntu mainly because I found good instructional books on these. 'Linux Distribution Chooser' points to Linux Mint & Mandriva, but I'm fairly certain no actual books exist, so probably not interested. If anyone wants to offer advice on which distro to pick, here is what I need it to do (in order of importance):
1. Forage the internet safely
2. Printout pages/photos easily, like XP Pro does.
3. Watch movies/TV shows fullscreen, or better yet, send them into my TV/DVD
recorder setup.
4. Burn/capture 'viral videos', YouTube clips, ect., to DVD (for playback on my TV).
5. This one is quite optional, but maybe some sort of 'photoshop' thing (I saw this
guy that takes photos of famous paintings and replaces the faces with his dogs
face). Sounds like possible hobby for me.
Above is all I need a distro to do. Suggestions welcomed.

[devils casper]

I would suggest you to try LiveCDs of Ubuntu and Fedora first. Check if all of your Hardware get detected. You can install almost any package in any distro and I don't think you need a boot to install/use any distro. Plenty of documentation is available over net.

My suggestion : Nobody can tell you what is best for you. Use LiveCDs and decide yourself. Check the link in my signature too.

[rokytnji]

towards either Xandros

I had Xandros on my EEEPC 900. While it was a nice distro back in 2007 for this unit. It was fairly easy to break trying to modify and update it. By update I just ean running newer current applications like Konqueror File Browser or Konsole.

I would suggest Mint for starters as a good starting point for a new Linux User.
Ubuntu tutorials and Ubuntu packages for applications are applicable to Linnux Mint. In other words. If it will work in Ubuntu. It will also more than likely work in Mint. As Long as you match the how to to your version of Mint. Like Mint 9 = Ubuntu 10.04
Linux Mint - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Seems me and DC are playing, tag you are it.

[ultimatelinux]

Ubuntu hass good support for Multimedia, so go for Ubuntu.

[oz]

Debian and Ubuntu both have plenty of books if you feel that you really must have one. The last distribution specific book that I bought was on Slackware and that book wound up being out of date in about 6 months so I stopped buying them. Instead, all my learning about any distribution comes from online reading and experience with that particular distribution.

Best of luck with whatever route you choose.

[genomega]

Give the PCLinuxOS live cd a tryout. pclinuxos dot com

Get the 2010-2 version. I like it because updating is idiot proof.

[sixdrift]

You can do all that with just about any Linux distro. All of the top ones today support these items. Some distros come with all the media players/codecs/libraries already installed, many do not. So you may have to take the extra step of installing these.

Regarding your #5, photo editing... I use The Gimp. It comes preloaded on distros like Ubuntu.

If you are unsure which distro to choose, go look on distrowatch.com for the top distros. They have summaries and links to all of the major distros.

[Faileas]

Debian and Ubuntu both have plenty of books if you feel that you really must have one. The last distribution specific book that I bought was on Slackware and that book wound up being out of date in about 6 months so I stopped buying them. Instead, all my learning about any distribution comes from online reading and experience with that particular distribution.

Best of luck with whatever route you choose.

I'll look further into Debian and Ubuntu. Don't really matter none if a book becomes obsolete "in about six months". If I can't get comfortable with an OS in 6 months, I'm likely going to jettison it anyway. A book and/or live CD is good crutch til one gets a firm footing. As mentioned before, I get little computer time, so online reading is not really an option, public computers block downloads so that kills e-books...
actual books are about all thats left for me.

[Faileas]

You can do all that with just about any Linux distro. All of the top ones today support these items. Some distros come with all the media players/codecs/libraries already installed, many do not. So you may have to take the extra step of installing these.

Regarding your #5, photo editing... I use The Gimp. It comes preloaded on distros like Ubuntu.

If you are unsure which distro to choose, go look on distrowatch.com for the top distros. They have summaries and links to all of the major distros.

Everything I've come across so far suggests that not all linux distros are created equal when it comes to video, burning DVDs, and similar stuff. Okay I think now I'm starting to see what you're saying. Guess I should ask which "distros come with all the media players/codecs/libraries already installed"? In particular, any distros that have everything needed, to do what I need doing?

[genomega]

Everything I've come across so far suggests that not all linux distros are created equal when it comes to video, burning DVDs, and similar stuff. Okay I think now I'm starting to see what you're saying. Guess I should ask which "distros come with all the media players/codecs/libraries already installed"? In particular, any distros that have everything needed, to do what I need doing?

Then let me repeat myself: PCLinuxOS