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Lately I have been considering changing my operating system from Windows Professional to a Linux-based operating system. I have read up on two operating systems: Mandrake Linux 9.2 and Gentoo 1.4, which of these is more user friendly or easier to learn?
Mandrake will be far easier, but IMHO linux is all about choices, look at distrowatch.com and read about some of the distro's there. Also, make sure you are considering the most recent versions, mandrake is now on 10. Also, reading the forums a litttle can give you a better taste for them. Finaly, gentoo will be a steeper learning curve, but if you have a solid computer foundation, the handbook will guide you through it exceptionaly well, and in the end you will have an extreamly powerful system.
I guess I can answer this one a little bit, since I was using Mandrake 9.2 and am in the process (literaly) of install gentoo on my system. I like 9.2 to start with, because it got me into the whole linux business, and I didn't have to go through a hard install, and all my hardware was supported. Eventally though, I figured out that I hadn't installed all the programs, or all the correct libraries. In the process of trying to look at the dependencies, I just decided to install gentoo, because of the "emerge" program, which from what I can tell, calculates all of the dependencies very well.
If you have played around with linux before and feel comfotable with it, then you should go for gentoo, because it seems much more powerful (again, i haven't finished installing it). If you are just getting into linux, I would recomend Mandrake.
tkott summed things up pretty nicley there.. gentoo make a mockery of distros that suffer from "dependancy hell" however something that puts a lot of people off is the fact that you need to set up a few things manualy (installation, kernel, xfree86, accelerated graphics) Gentoo is _rock_ solid - when configured properly, I have used it for a few years now and I can honestly say that it has _never_ crashed on me and I have recorded uptimes of several months (stopped only by the odd power cut, must get a UPS :/ )
I'd recommend you'd start off with Madrake, and play around with it for a couple weeks or so. When you get used to things, you can eventually move to gentoo. Gentoo is by far the best (my opinion) distro, but that doesn't mean you have to start your linuxing with it :)
Remember, most linuxes are free, so just download as many as you can, try them out, and settle for the one you like the most :)