Recommended Distro for New Linux Users (2011)

[zenwalker]

I second MikeTbob, with Puppy third

[Bemk]

I'm going for mint, but now Ubuntu has Unity, it seems like a warm welcome to any new person. Mint feels simpler to me though.

[MASONTX]

I've used unity on dream linux, and while it seemed like a good idea at first, I prefer to pick the icons I pin to my desktop and the order I put them. With mint, you can decide what you want on your desktop and put it in the order that works for you.

[DASH-D]

Hi, I'm also starting in Linux and I am wondering why no one recommends Fedora 15 with Gnome 3 for beginners?

What are the drawbacks in Fedora for not recommending it? I'm asking because it's the distribution I was about to install. So far I tried Ubuntu 11.04.

EDIT:

I think now know why: no MP3 support, no included office apps, tricky VLC installation, small application repository.

but it comes with GNOME 3 which is nice to my eyes, better than Unity as far as I can tell.

[daark.child]

I mainly use Fedora (and RHEL based distros like Scientific Linux and CentOS). I don't agree that they have "small" application repositories. Their own repositories do not include non free software (as in proprietary or packages that have patent issues), but you can install these packages from repositories such as rpmfusion. Take a look here for a list of third party repositories. These also contain the multimedia codecs you need. As for office apps, Fedora has Libreoffice/Openoffice and others.

[DASH-D]

Hey daark.child,

Thanks for the prompt reply! Ok I'll scope it out soon. I'm just starting with linux and found that Gnome3 is much more my style than Unity in Ubuntu. I don't want to do a D-I-Y job in ubuntu to have Gnome.

What I want my Linux-PC for is: Webbrowsing (Java and Flash support needed), Downloading torrents and DDL, Homecinema with 5.1 sound (VLC + Realtek ALC885 drivers) and photo editing (Gimp). Also USB3.0 support is a must have for handling the backups faster.

But I still don't understand why no one here recommends Fedora for beginners.

Cheers

[elija]

Speaking personally, Fedora has always been a tad flakey (as opposed to the RHEL based distros) which I always put down to the cutting edge nature of the distro.

Every time I have tried Fedora, it hasn't taken me long to decsend into dependency hell; where you need to install package A which depends on package B. Unfortunately package B depends on package A. And this is just when installing stuff from the standard repository. The record goes to Fedora 10 (or maybe 11) which after a completely clean install offered me a couple of hundred updates which wouldn't install due to the above situation. I couldn't recommend a distro that does that as beginner friendly; but as long as you go into it with open eyes

The RHEL based distros have never caused dependency hell for me so I suppose these things get ironed out while in the community stage.

To be fair, it is probably just a badly packaged piece of software that causes this but still...

Multimedia is also more difficult, non-free drivers are more difficult and so on. None of these are impossible to overcome and none of them are actually that difficult if you have access to Google and an inkling of what to search for but most beginners will want as smooth a ride as possible.

Is Fedora beginner friendly? Not particularly
Is Fedora beginner un-friendly? Not particularly

The last Fedora I tried was 15 and my opinion didn't change. And I really didn't like Gnome Shell; once again I must declare personal opinion in that preference.

Ultimately, the only way to find out if a distro is suited to you is to try it for yourself. I usually recommend Mint and if someone is able to follow instructions to change a repository, Linux Mint Debian Edition.

[DASH-D]

Ok thanks elija, I'll build my own opinion and vote for the distribution that suites my requirements. I'll try Ubuntu, Fedora and OpenSuse, maybe Debian...

In the meantime, take care

Cheers

[Bemk]

Best option is to try several in a virtual machine.
Make a selection of them and test them from live-cd, to see if they work with your hardware.
Then make a list of pros and cons, weighed by the priority you give to the specific feature or bug and select the best result.

This tends to lead most people I directly know to Debian based distro's but, since nobody is the same, you might just as well like Gentoo.
Choosing Gentoo is rather improbable but still possible. (Improbable enough to be in the "Other" catagory).