Which is the best Linux distro for beginers w/o any Linux experience?

[Poritz]

Which distro is best for beginners? From installation to everyday use. Look foward to hearing from someone soon.

 

[BCYL]

Mandrake and RedHat... these 2 distros are the most widely used, great for beginners... you should also be able to find help everywhere...

 

[Epyon9283]

I would say Mandrake because the redhat install is a little more complicated...

 

[andrey]

as BCYL said, either RedHat or Mandrake should be pretty easy for beginners.

 

[asiagian]

I tried Mandrake 8.0, 8,1, RedHat 7.1, 7.2 and still think that Mandrake is user friendlier than RH.

 

[aka1nas]

Which is best for dual-booting? Mandrake 7.0s boot managers would never work correctly and not allow me to boot back into windows. It really sucked. Try reformatting a linux partiton with FDisk. Oh wait.... you can't! I then had to puzzle out how to reformat the linux partition using an OS I didn't know how to use, which didn't have support for most of my hardware, most importantly at the time, my modem. Is mandrake 8 any better?

 

[NorthenLove]

I would say SuSE since am a SuSE fan.

 

[nino]

I'd have to say Mandrake 8.1 over Redhat 7.2. I tried both and am now thrilled with MDK 8.1. The toughest part for me, as a newbie (4 months)
was setting up the file system. This is how I set mine up:
/ - 250MB
/swap - 250 MB
/usr - 3 GB (I'd change to at least 4 GB on my next install)
/home - 3 GB (I'd change to 2 GB on my next install)

I found these to be the settings that provided the greatest comfort. I didn't realize how much space linux required IF you choose to install
all of that AWESOME free software. I'm REALLY impressed.

I would choose NOT to install Mozilla or Netscape as the Mozilla included is outdated and Netscape is bloated (IMHO).
I would then go to the www.mozilla.org site and get the latest mozilla and IT WORKS AWESOME. I then recommend getting the available
ACQUA theme and installing it in KDE as it is pretty darned impressive. Do a search at google for ACQUA theme for it.

It's been tough for the first few months and I'm learning a little bit at a time but w/the acqua theme and mozilla I've been able to use Linux
just about every day and hardly ever go into Windows. The hardest thing since the install was setting up the Lucent modem in my inspiron
8100 laptop but I JUST got that done and now I'm in Linux heaven.

Good luck with it,
Nino