Choosing the right Distro of linux

[redmoos3]

here we go, its been a long time since i decided to work with linux. i just finally got fed up with windows and there is no way in hell im going apple. so now i need a good distributions.

I am wanting to try it out on my acer netbook it is an

Acer One D255E-13639

a 1.66 GHZ processor and a 1gig of ram, and a 250 gig hard drive, and usb only no cd

ideally i want to be able to use this to do simple network pen testing and some sort of other network hacking tools.

and quick
any help would be appreciated

[MASONTX]

You should be able to run any distro you want with 1 gig ram. Go to distrowatch.com and check out the over 600 distros they have. If that number overwelms you, go down the right hand side of the page, and they have the top 100 downloads listed in order of # of downloads. Try the top 10 to 20 and pick the one you like best.

[theKbStockpiler]

Most users are going to desire a O.S that is ready to install along with install-able binaries that will install with a (Package Manager). What this means is that you don't have to install by source code which can be very difficult. For some one that wants out of the box functionality I would suggest Fedora, Suse , Mandriva , Mageia (brandnew) and Debian. The exotic O.S's don't come compiled (in binary form) like gentoo I think and don't have a large choice of applications that are installed by a Package Manager or a Packager Manager at all. There are other good O.S's but they are not that popular and the lack of support matches. Ubuntu has a million versions and has a lot of beginner support but in my opinion is more like a brand and not like a version of Linux. If you want the most success immediately I would choose Ubuntu or maybe Mint. My favorites are Mandriva or the new fork which I have not tried yet Mageia. Suse's interface is quite different and too involved in my opinion but works well.

[rohit87]

Go to google and search for the linux distro test. You'll see a site called zegeniestudios. Its a linux distro test. May come handy for you. I cannot post the url as I have not made 15 posts. hehe

[oz]

Hello

You can find a couple of links to distro quizzes and some other info that should help you with picking a distro for your needs here:

http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/new...e-posting.html

Sometimes, laptop users have a little more trouble finding the right distro for their hardware, but it usually works out after some trial and error testing. Any of the top 5 to 10 distros in the page hits ranking chart over at DistroWatch.com are usually a good place to start.

Let us know what you wind up going with.