distro for total linux noob

[ricksalty]

OK so my win box crashed, found another hdd and dont have win anymore. am using slack 12 and am seeing lots of posts that slack is for more advanced users. what distro w0ould you suggest for a total beginer?

thanks

[oz]

Welcome to the forums!

There is nothing at all wrong with you continuing to run Slackware if you feel comfortable with it and you like it. Otherwise, Fedora, Mandriva, OpenSUSE, and Ubuntu are all good and popular choices for new Linux users.

Hope you will find the distro that's just right for you!

[ricksalty]

well there in lies the prob...i have been reading till my eyes bleed and i still cant even install a simple browser upgrade. my brother runs unbunto and says is very slow prog. i dont mund doin the legwork, but i must be able to install what i need. it seems that after all these years runnin win i have lost the ability to run a command line based os lol.

[oz]

i still cant even install a simple browser upgrade

The easiest way for new Slackware users to install software is probably with a package tool such as slackpkg, slapt-get, or swaret. If the package that you want has already been packaged for Slackware and it resides in a repository, any of those tools make installation fairly easy and straightforward.

Ready-to-go packages for Slackware can of course be found at Slackware mirror sites, but many packages can also be found here:

SlackBuilds.org

LinuxPackages: View

Quite often, the old-timers to Slackware prefer to use pkgtool or other package installation methods:

Package Utilities

[ricksalty]

Thank you much for the info, got most of what i wanted fixed i think. I also installed wine and trying to install winetricks, however i am having a prob with su. logged in as root i try to run visudo and keep gettin sudoers busy try again later?

Again,
Thank You for your help!

Rick

[oz]

i am having a prob with su. logged in as root i try to run visudo and keep gettin sudoers busy try again later?

According to the diagnostics section of the manual page for visudo, that message means that someone else is currently editing the sudoers file.

You can go to a terminal and run the following for the details on using visudo:

man visudo

[iavor]

OK so my win box crashed, found another hdd and dont have win anymore. am using slack 12 and am seeing lots of posts that slack is for more advanced users. what distro w0ould you suggest for a total beginer?

thanks

you could try Ubuntu its prolly the easiest to use out there.. i've been using slackware for a couple of weeks and so far i cant complain its a bit tricky but you could always get help from the community