What distro should I use - complete noob

[Matt_Linux]

Hello everyone,

I am new to linux really, only using Mandrake Linux 9.2 running IceWM for a couple of weeks.

But i would like to know what distro would be the best for me.

At the moment i am downloading Mandriva Linux 2006 only because i used an earlier version.

Thanks for your help

Matt

PS. Any distro that doesn't need too much command based work will do for me, just haven't got time or the concentration to learn it all being 15 and still going to school lol.

[josolanes]

For new users, Mandriva, Suse, Fedora Core 4, Ubuntu (Kubuntu), and some others would fit you.

Go to www.distrowatch.com and look through their top 10 distros list (right side of the page). It seems that the top 6 are well suited for new linux users...beyond that they become more advanced.

I've found that the desktop environment KDE is very well suited for new users as it comes with many many tools that facilitate things, but you will need a pretty good system to use it with any speed (it's very resource intensive). If you're looking to save resources (slower computer), than I'd recommend Gnome or another light window manager/desktop environment (such as the one you're currently using, IceWM).

Whatever you choose, have fun with it

[Game master pro]

Theres a post about this somewhere, but for the life of me can't find it with this new fangled vbulletin thingy

http://www.zegeniestudios.net/ldc/


take that test, see if it helps

[Matt_Linux]

Thanks for the tips, well it doesn't matter to me about speed because I got a 2.8Ghz AMD chip and a lot of ram.

But I still like using IceWM for some reason.

Possibly because of all the themes, especially the WinXP one.

[TomX]

Before we can recommend a distribution we need to know what your looking for in a computer.

Programming, "Do it all for you", "Let you do it all" and whether or not your computer is high-end or not.

For example, if it's high-end I might recommend SuSe or Mandriva but if it's low-end I would most likely recommend Zenwalk.

I used Slackware for my first distribution and I'm only 17 (not like age matters, but since you quoted it I figured I may aswell, two years ain't much). It's generally known for it's simplicity and doesn't help you much when configuring.

For the first few weeks (and in particular the first day, when I had to setup X... I didn't even know what it was) it was quite difficult. A great leap forward from Windows but I don't regret it. I learnt a lot about Linux then and hopefully, by continuing to use Slackware (or other distributions which promote understanding: Gentoo & Arch Linux come to mind) will continue to learn more and more about Linux and computers in general, which is why I started using Linux in the first place.

Note: Re-reading this I may have given a false opinion. I believe that despite how distributions such as SuSe & Mandriva provide nice GUI applications to help configuring your system, it will still allow the user to maintain these files through command-line or however he/she wants.

You may think: Mandriva = Slackware + GUI Tools + Dependancy Checking and whilst this is true to an extent I think by Slackware not providing many of these GUI tools, it says something about the distribution, that it wants to you understand what's going on.

It's much easier to use Mandriva/SuSe/Ubuntu without understanding Linux than using Slackware/Gentoo/Arch without understanding Linux. However, this is a generalization. I still consider myself to be a newbie (as you can tell from recent posts I've made on this forum) and there's no doubt really capable Linux users using Mandriva/SuSe/Ubuntu (eg. I bet the devleopers of each of the distributions use their distributions... they're very capable).

[chopin1810]

There's no distribution anybody can recommend for you; with Linux it's always better to discover this stuff for yourself. Just look around the site and you'll find at least 100 articles asking the exact same question as you do here.

[Tommaso]

Go to www.distrowatch.com and look through their top 10 distros list (right side of the page).

That's what TechieMoe always reccomends... as he locks the thread.

I also reccomend http://shots.osdir.com/ if you want to see screenshots of the major distributions.

[NeoSNightmarE]

Go with something like what was said...SuSE, Mandrake, something like that. Right now I'm using SuSE 10 as my main Linux distro because I'm trying to convert my parents. Isn't going the best but I still have hope it may. Even try something more Debian based like Ubuntu or Kubuntu. In the end of the day though, it's your choice as you will be the one using it.

[scientica]

/forum/newbie/8441-distro-look-here-before-posting.html