Best Linux for a Linux n00b

Hi,
I'm planning on having a dual harddrive after January, and I want one to have Linux as it's operating system (so, basically a dual OS), but I'm a complete n00b at Linux. I know very little of it -- infact nearly nothing. And I'd love to hear some opinions and thoughts of where best to get started with it.

Thanks

Archaic Sage

I have tried several flavors and have found SuSe to be my most favorite. We run it at work for both our intranet and for our day to day operations. It is best bought in a store because it comes with some good documentation, if you are going to download then go with Mandrake. These two are probably the best for new users in that they offer easy to use installations that are virtually foolproof, and have good GUI config programs once you get things up and running.

Also, don't get frustrated with it, years ago it took me a good month of late nights to get my first distro up and running like I wanted it...Stay with it

Edit: Spelling

yea, the first and only version of linux i used was SuSe. but i downloaded it, so i had to go to http://www.linuxforum.com to get some help on how to do certain things.

but i've also downloaded Slackware and Fedora so i'm going to try those, i just wanted to bring my PC back to best buy so they could fix my floppy before doing so. *shrug* and i want to download Mandrake but as far as SuSe goes, yea.. its basically foolproof. lol, it sets up the dual boot options for you and is really easy to install.

For the complete 'noob' Xandros and Linspire are pretty good. I've played around with Xandros and it's fast and simple. They're quick to install and very simple to use. However Xandros is much harder to change to suit your needs. It's designed to work simply and not for modifying.

Mandrake is supposed to have the best GUI and ease of use while still maintaining ease of choice. With Mandrake you can change your desktop enviroment easily and stuff like that.

People say SuSe has the best internationalization and I personally use SuSe its a good all around distro and it's not hard to setup. The Yast feature is very good since it allows you to control all aspects of the OS from one place.

In my opinion, SuSe has more ease of use than even Windows XP. And many other distro's also beat Windows XP in that area.

Choose the distro you like, my advice is to try installing each of them and find the one you like best, and keeping that one. It's a bit more work in the beginning but you'll at least know what the others are like.

Good luck with it.

Note. SuSe comes with a LiveCD these days so why not give that a try. I don't know if the other ones come with a LiveCD but check out their site. That way you get to try them out and without the hassle of install.

Thanks for all the help guys .

I must admit, I thought of Mandrake at first as well. Simply because it's really popular. I know that it's meant to be a lot like XP; but a little different.

I've never even heard of the rest. But I think that installing a variety of OS's is the best way for it.

I really recommend SuSE... its easy with suse to setup, configure things i think its very good one to start with

yep, i recommend suse too, i found it pretty easy to use and setup. it all really just takes a matter of getting used to...which took me quite awhile, now i stopped using linux, and im gonna try out unix, the freebsd one

Bravo.

yea, i downloaded FreeBSD along with all of the major versions of linux i didn't have and i'm excited to try it out. from what i read off the website, it seems that it'll be one of the more secure os's.. but also, anyone know what are the features that make it better?

Ports collection (recently copied by the Gentoo folks)
IP stack
Router IO (FreeBSD can now route 1Mpps compared to the 100kpps offered by Linux)
Base security -- FreeBSD does NOT install a GUI by default. Not to mention that some distros turn on a ton of insecure options during install.
The list goes on, but for performance, stability and security my money is on FreeBSD.

This is not to say that Linux is bad, quite the contrary. Linux has opened the door for people to see a world beyond Windows. The important thing is to choose what is right for you, and your application. If that happens to be Windows, so be it. If it's Linux of Unix, dandy.

It's nice to have choices; the trick is to use those choices wisely and make informed ones.

Cheers.

FreeBSD is most famous for its stability and scalability as a server. It's also probably the most User friendly of all the *BSD platforms.

Personally I've used OpenBSD for a webserver and I havn't had any problems with it. OpenBSD is supposed to be the most secure OS. There site proudly claims to have only had one remote root hole in 8 years. Of course I've found its a bit hard to setup as a server when your not used to it.

The other BSD is NetBSD which is famous for its portability, its supposedly the OS that can be loaded on the most architectures like PPC, embedded devices, and game consoles.

There is also now a FreeBSD LiveCD called FreeBSIE (I think) so I'll probably check that out too.

As stated above, FreeBSD is very stable and very secure, and really makes for a nice server (Haven't used it as a workstation, so no comment on that)

For a workstation, I have tried Redhat, Mandrake and recently Suse. Suse is the most easy to use in my opinion, especially for someone new to linux.

ok..

the whole "bsd = webserver" thing is good to know before i go installing, expecting to setup a workstation. lol >i realize that its not only capable of being a webserver, but this seems to be its most common use<

and i just read somewhere that OpenBSD and Solaris Secured(?) are the most secure OS's. ?

Open BSD is the most secure OS on the planet -- out of the box.

I say this because as-is, that statement holds true. The minute you add applications which cause socket connects, you break that statement.


What it boils down to is the administrator. If one is worth his or her salt, they will set that box up to be as secure as it can be subsequent to the app installs. Now, a properly configured BSD bos is, in my opinion, much more secure than most other things on the planet. I've heard that much of the secure options going into OpenBSD are finding their way into FreeBSD, BTW.

I wouldn't trust Solaris with a 10ft pole -- and I was a Solaris Certified Systems Engineer for years.

One more thing, you see 'webserver' a lot on here, as this is a Webmaster forum, however, I would like to amend any conceptual ideas of what BSD does and does not serve well by saying, "It's a more stable server, period.".

Cheers.

hmm.. all good to know. thank you

when i'm not so n00bish to linux i'm going to have to check that out (i've installed SuSe twice, set up a couple accounts.. played around with it for a while, but thats all.)