The Easiest Linux

**chopin1810** · 08-17-2005

What's the most user-freindly distribution: Mandriva, SUSE, or Xandros? I'm going to install a Linux distribution for my mom (who's so tech illiterate she forgot where the delete key was last year. Real story).
I run SUSE and it seems that a little more user intervention is required than in the other two.

**aysiu** · 08-17-2005

Be as specific as possible.
What tasks does your mom need?
How much experience do you have with Linux?
How do you define "user-friendly"?

Honestly, at the end of the day, a distro is a distro is Linux. Any distro can do KDE, Gnome, or any window manager. Any distro can have various programs. Any distro can have a root/user security set up (and most do this by default). Most distros are also point-and-click once set up properly.

**LondoJowo** · 08-17-2005

Xandros or SimplyMepis would be good for a new user as they are close to having the look/feel of Windows.

I'm not a big fan of Mandrake/Mandriva as I've always had problems with them.

SuSE has been my favorite distro since 9.0

**chopin1810** · 08-17-2005

Originally Posted by aysiu

Be as specific as possible.
What tasks does your mom need?
How much experience do you have with Linux?
How do you define "user-friendly"?

Honestly, at the end of the day, a distro is a distro is Linux. Any distro can do KDE, Gnome, or any window manager. Any distro can have various programs. Any distro can have a root/user security set up (and most do this by default). Most distros are also point-and-click once set up properly.

Okay, she just basically reads a lot of emails, and surfs the internet A LOT for political junk (she's a major republican). So she doesn't do much but what she does do she does a lot of. In other words I need something that won't poop out on her after two or three hours of heavy web surfing.
I'm about one month into Linux, but I'm a very fast learner and I'm picking stuff up really quickly. I even have FreeBSD installed because I'm studying shell programming.
By user friendly I mean close to Windows apperance wise and something that won't crash a lot (error messages give her goosebumps).
One last thing, I get your last point, but I don't have a lot of time to set something up correctly like Slackware, or otherwise I wouldn't have posted this. I'm really busy and work on Saturdays, I live in Chicago and mom's in a indianapolis suburb. So something that wouldn't take much time to install or configure would be nice too.

**LondoJowo** · 08-17-2005

By user friendly I mean close to Windows apperance wise and something that won't crash a lot (error messages give her goosebumps).
One last thing, I get your last point, but I don't have a lot of time to set something up correctly like Slackware, or otherwise I wouldn't have posted this. I'm really busy and work on Saturdays, I live in Chicago and mom's in a indianapolis suburb. So something that wouldn't take much time to install or configure would be nice too.

Xandros and SimplyMepis both fit the bill, you can get the system up and going in about a 1/2 hour. If she has a high speed connection, you can update/add programs quickly using Xandos Network or Synaptics Mepis, another 1/2 hour.

**aysiu** · 08-17-2005

Originally Posted by chopin1810

In other words I need something that won't poop out on her after two or three hours of heavy web surfing.

By user friendly I mean close to Windows apperance wise and something that won't crash a lot (error messages give her goosebumps).

Any distro will fit this bill. Just pick one with a KDE desktop (any of the aforementioned), don't give her root privileges, and make sure Firefox, Thunderbird, and her home folder are the only icons on the panel. If she wants something extremely Windows-like, you can install XPDE as a desktop environment.

http://www.xpde.com/

**bigtomrodney** · 08-17-2005

I was a long term Mandriva user, and as user friendly as it is, SuSE just added the polish that (IMHO) makes it a better distro. It may be haevier than some distros, but when compared with Mandriva they're really in the same league.

**chopin1810** · 08-17-2005

I see...
Thanks.
I'm gonna install XPDE for her... it looks good.

**techieMoe** · 08-17-2005

User-friendliness is relative to the person using it. There are many different ideas out there of what is "user friendly" and what is not. As with any "which distro" thread, I recommend looking at DistroWatch.

**chopin1810** · 08-17-2005

...and distrowatch is where I looked. That's how I found out that Xandros, Mandriva, and SUSE were the most user-friendly distributions. Then I asked you guys from there.

Thread Tools

Display

The Easiest Linux

Posting Permissions