What is the easiest Linux for beginners?

What is the Easiest Linux for Beginners ?
That question is a matter of preference, personal tasks and hardware.

Ok, so how do I choose a Linux distro for me?
At the end of the day, the best way is to try a few, and be prepared to experiment.
For a quick Q and A test to narrow it down a little, the guys over at Zegenie Studios
have prepared a Linux Chooser for newbies:
Linux Distribution Chooser

The test only includes a fraction of the Linux distros which are avaiable, but many new distros are
based on the ones you will have suggested at the end of the test.

Ok, the Linux Distribution Chooser told me to try [Distro], what now?

Head over to the most comprehensive Linux distro site on the net, which not only lists practically every distro, but has reviews, news, distro profile pages, a distro searcher, and a top 100 ranking which shows the most popular distros that are being used around the world. Distrowatch.Com    If you scroll down a bit, to the right you will see the distro rankings.

The Current Top 10 are:
Rank Distribution  
1 Ubuntu  
2 openSUSE  
3 Mint  
4 Fedora  
5 PCLinuxOS  
6 Debian  
7 Mandriva  
8 Dreamlinux  
9 Sabayon  
10 Damn Small

What now?, Good News !! Linux is easier than ever
1. Most Linux distros are available as a Live CD, which means you can try for a while and have a play
with your new chosen distro without having to install it, nor will it change anything at all on your
computer. So your Windows is completely safe.

2. READ!!!! Many new users have forgotten this skill. Go to the main website of your distro and also 
the support forum and USE-THE-SEARCH-BOX. They all have them, and remember Google is your friend.
Be prepared to take notes, print information and sign up on a support forum.

A Few Extra Notes Before The Impatient Ones Dive In Feet First
a) Linux Distros are downloaded as an iso file and will need to be burned to a cd or dvd as an image NOT data.
b) Linux images should be burned at the slowest possible speed. Each burner will vary, try with 4X to start with.
c) Not ALL distros work on ALL hardware, although Linux comes with 1000′s of hardware drivers preinstalled or easily available.
d) Use Google or a Forum Search for a “How to Install [Distro] Guide”, most distros will now offer you a step-by-step installation 
program that will do it all for you anyway, all you have to do is answer a few questions on the application by clicking Yes or No.
e) If in doubt at any stage whatsoever, ask on the forum.

Linux Forum Do’s and Don’ts

There is a little netiquette involved on many forums, and each has their own way of doing things to keep the forum friendly, helpful, 

organised and easy to use. Forum communities are like little towns; everybody knows eachother, you will always be welcomed with
open arms, there will be hepful and not so helpful advice, young and old, novices and experts, and probably a village idiot  
Forums will be run by a team of Administrators and Moderators, some are friendly and blend in as members, others are like the Gestapo on a power trip with their new found position. In general they are all there to help maintain order and support with different degrees of efficiency.

DO try and find an introduction thread and post a “Hello everybody, i’m new to Linux”. See what kind of welcome you get from staff as well as members.
DO read the forum rules. Some are long winded while others are short and to the point.
DO use the forum Help button which will provide a guide on forum use and features.
DO look at the various sections and post in the right place.
DO use the Forum Search, your question may already have been asked and solved and even have a Howto guide.
DO be prepared to help yourself, you get far more respect and quicker help if you can show that you have tried.

DON’T expect an answer within 5 seconds. Forums are run by volunteers with jobs, families and lives outside of the forum.
DON’T whine and complain. Stick to the point and stay positive, you will have everybody jumping in to help you.
DON’T double post your problem a second time or in different sections, you will not get helped any faster.
DON’T post useless information. “My screen is black”. State what your hardware is, and try to remember any error messages.
DON’T post attention-seeking exagerated titles. “[Distro] broke my computer!!!!!!!!! going back to Windows!!!!! AAaaaaah!”.

Ok, so, you have got a list of possible Linux distros, you know how to look for information and help. What now?
Go and buy a pack of good quality blank cd’s.
Head over to Distrowatch and read up on the Top 10 distros.
Start downloading your chosen Linux distro images.
Burn the images to cd’s
Insert in CDROM drive and reboot the computer.
Nine out of Ten times, you will wait about 5 to 10 minutes and will be at a Linux desktop. You will be able to play and experiment
without having to worry about any adverse effects whatsoever on your already installed Windows system.

That’s it !! Welcome to the wonderful world of Linux  

From Debian to Arch Linux

Well this day had to come sooner or later. I have decided to part with my long time friend: Debian

Does this mean I am going to launch into a tirade of how bad Debian is?

Not a chance! Debian is an awesome distro, it has served me well for a long time.

So why did you change? 

There are a number of reasons, all of which can be argued and defended by Debian fans all day long, but the main reason is choice. I like choice, one of the main reasons I use Linux, and also my attitude towards the philosophy of Debian and certain political choices the developers made. I basically feel that the advancement of Debian has been hindered by too much politics and not enough programming.

Debian Politics and Philosophy

Fire to Ice

The whole Mozilla renaming thing was a joke, no matter whether it be Debian’s or Mozillas fault (I am currently typing from Opera). I haven’t read every line of code in Iceweasel, but I have used it enough to know that it was….. different. But then again, there have been a lot of crash and freeze reports flowing on the forums of most major distros regarding FF3 + Xulrunner and Flash.

Drivers/Firmware

Nowadays everybody needs proprietry firmware and drivers for graphics cards and network cards/modems. Debian has them in the repositories but cannot either legally/politically provide them from the start on that all-important first iso. This is a pain in the ass if you only have a wireless internet connection, especially one that needs Madwifi for example. Sure, I had a copy of Madwifi available and Debian provided wireless-tools, kernel headers and build essential on a full iso install. What about the “Netinstall” Network Install iso which provides a basic base install which needs to have everything downloaded from the internet? If you’ve got wireless, USB modem or anything which isn’t a recognised network card to router connection, forget it. And that’s the Newtork Install which needs to be able to connect to the internet. Talk about the never ending circle.

Hipocracy 

However, the Debian developers agreed to include Mono to accompany a “complete” Gnome install (Tomboy and in the future more apps will need Mono). That’s all i’m going to say about Mono. If you want to know about how “Open” and “Free” and especially “Non-Proprietry” Mono is, Google it and read up on the code. Maybe checkout Debian forums and see what the users’ attitude was to the inclusion of Mono.

Debian Stability 

To be honest those three examples are small niggly problems which are easy to overcome, don’t use netinstall, have a copy of madwifi saved to a usb key, remove Mono. The main problem for me has been stability. Up to Etch I had laptops and boxes which were solid as a rock, all day every day. Suddenly changes started to appear (with updates and upgrades), basically I was experiencing system freezes and kernel panics while using Firefox/Iceweasel/Flash. After upgrading to the new kernel, the system was just sucking up Ram and Cpu. Honestly, Iceweasel was using a 3rd of my resources. I was noticing random bursts of system activity which I had never had before. My systems were always lean and mean.

There were changes happening and problems occuring which I couldn’t find the solutions for. All the logs showed were segfault or there were no logs at all. I noticed the same problems with Dreamlinux (I still use Dreamlinux as I admin dreamlinuxforums.org) I saw the same problems/errors being posted on Ubuntu Forums as well. There were definitely a lot of Debian-based changes occurring and being passed down the line. That was when I decided to go non-Debian. After so many years of relying on the famous “Debian Stability” and doing things “The Debian Way” (which no longer guaranteed a stable setup), I decided to look for something that would let ME decide what was installed. Whatsmore, I wanted the default, pure packages from the applications’ developers, not something that was modified by a distro developer for their own reasons.

The New Distro Search 

Well, I am no stranger to distro-tests, and distrowatch. So off I went to check out latest releases. Bearing in mind I was a Debian user, there was no way I would use an rpm (Pclos, Suse, Mandriva) based distro. I didn’t want Debian-based, especially not one that is owned by a corporation (Ubuntu was out of the question for many reasons).

What am I looking for in a distro?

So I started looking at the BSD’s, nah, I have experience with BSD’s, the devs are worse than Debian for their petty in-fighting etc and political views.

Ok, source or tar.gz package based Linux, communtiy orientated, not a N00b distro, (I hate takers and new Linux users who can’t use Google or read a wiki before posting how “[insert distro] sucks because…….” on a forum).

Something with good communtiy documentation and support if needed (Going from the “Debian Way” to a new distro, I am going to be n00b again). three distros sprang out:

1) Gentoo (Extremely good community documentation, stable distro)

2) Archlinux (Same as above)

3) Paldo (Smaller community, Upkg package manager doesn’t quite cut it)

What made me choose Archlinux?

Dunno, after reading up on both distros and looking at the forums and wikis, I just fancied trying Arch. Nothing against Gentoo at all.

These helped, especially the Archlinux newsletter (made me chuckle ;D)

http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Main_Page ( I printed it out and read it inside out over 2 days)

http://archux.com/ (New to Arch? Step by Step install and setup? This site Rocks!)

http://www.archlinux.org/static/newsletters/newsletter-2008-Aug-04.html#humor (Bounced Lol! Convinced me)

http://bbs.archlinux.org/ (Archlinux forums, I signed up, but haven’t needed to post yet)

So there we go, apart from Dreamlinux on one box ( I need it to be able to offer support on Dreamlinux Forums) and Debian on my laptops (at the moment), this main box of mine has been completely wiped and all 160 Gb’s is now dedicated to Archlinux.

richs-lxh