Your choice of Beginner's Intermediate Linux?

[aSystemOverload]

Hi guys, new into Linux and would like to know what people would recommend for a beginner. I want to use it for standard multimedia (music, videos/films/streaming), office, email/web etc...

I've initially installed Ubuntu.

[oz]

Hi guys, new into Linux and would like to know what people would recommend for a beginner.

Hello and welcome to the forums!

You can check this poll where members have voted on their recommended distro for new Linux users:

http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/cof...rs-2011-a.html

Your initial installation of Ubuntu is a popular starting place for new users.

[jayd512]

Welcome aboard!
Agreed. Ubuntu will help you along when you need it, but still let you poke around 'under the hood' if you feel like digging a little deeper.

[aSystemOverload]

Thank you guys. Is it fairly painless to access a Win7 machine's files (and vice versa). Not ready to go Linux all the way quiet yet.

[jayd512]

To access Windows files from Linux... fairly easy. Linux can read-write to NTFS without issue.
To access Linux files from Windows... not quite as simple
It can be done, but I've not run Windows in the last few years, so can't really give any first-hand comments on it.

[aSystemOverload]

Ahhhh cool, I'll have a play, see how it goes. I'll check some other posts for choice of partition types (ext3, 4, ntfs etc...). If you can recommend a good post, feel free to post it

[jayd512]

The most common FS types for Linux right now are ext3 and ext4.
Ubuntu will default to one of these (can't remember which one off-hand).

[theKbStockpiler]

Ubuntu is great for beginners but the GUI is actually a burden after a while. You don't learn anything beyond it. Great distro though. I'm using Ubuntu 7.10 Live disk right now because of Grub problems. What about Debian?

[aSystemOverload]

In what way is it a burden? I'll probably install something different to my second pc once the first is upto speed with Ubuntu. Debian seems to be a purer distro from the comments I've seen.

But I can't get rid of Win7 on the 2nd pc untill I can get my wireless printer/scanner working (as a scanner).

[MASONTX]

Ubuntu or one of its offspring such as Mint, Lubuntu, Xubntu, Ultimate, etc are good beginner distro's. I started with Ubuntu 3 years ago, and while I play with other distro's, and on limited resource systems use other distro's, my home computer still has Ubuntu on it.