Anyone have a suggestion for a distro best to use for a beginner?? I used to use Unix a lot. But my skills have diminished.. and I want to get back into it.. are some of the distros easier to install than others?? And do they generally all use the same commands?? I mean these are all Unix command systems right?? thanks for your help : ).. i had looked at Feather and Damn small Linux.. but i am not sure about either..

To see if you like it, why not try out a live cd? You can boot off the cd and play around with it without ever putting anything on the hard drive. Some options include Knoppix, SUSE live-eval, and MandrakeMove.

If you like it, some good installable newbie distributions include Mandrake, SUSE, and Xandros.

Nowadays the most common distributions have graphical installations, and its possible to use the system without ever encountering a command prompt, but of course you have complete access to all the power of the unix based shell. Yes, most of the commands you are used to will work, but for the most part you'll probably be using the GUI.

SUSE is my favorite general-audience distribution; it's easy to install (really a breeze, just keep clicking next...), supports everything, and comes with just about any program you'd need, from Office compatible software to music players. Very nice. I remember that Mandrake came with tons of software as well ("tons" as in three different audio players, a digital editing program, multiple video players, TWO complete suits of office software...).

Hope that helps!

thanks.. that helps a lot : )

Probably the most unix like distro is slackware but has often received critisism for being difficult to install/configure....mainly because you have to learn how it works and edit a few text files by hand rather than the more popular point-and-click. These days though the installer has improved and configuration can be made real easy with webmin. Free/Net/Open BSD is a non-linux alternative and again very unix like (well it does come from Berkeley!)

Saying all that though you will find just about any distro very unix like, the main ones for newbies being mandrake, fedora (formally redhat) and suse.

A live CD version like knoppix is probably the best way to go to start with as you'll be up and running within minutes. Knoppix is debian based (another good distro). Slackware also have a live CD called slax (http://slax.linux-live.org/).

For a round up of all the different distros check out www.distrowatch.com. To download them visit www.linuxiso.org.

Hi DJ3642. Personally I've been using
Fedora Core 1 for most of the time. It
takes about 40mins to install and is quite
easy to get set up. You'll need a serial
modem if on dial-up or an ethernet card
(NIC) if on ADSL or cable, to get on the
Internet. The IPTables packet filtering
firewall is all stealthed apart from
responding to ICMP (pings) which you can
stop by installing Guarddog firewall GUI,
and blocking ICMP, unless you want to write
a bit of script to do the same in IPTables.
I've got Mandrake which is quite good as
well, both the 9.2 and version 10.0. FC2 is
good as well. Debian took ages to install
and I still aint got sounds working on the
KDE desktop from my Audigy
soundcard.Slackware 10.0 is fine, mind you
it installs in text mode, so you have to
edit init to get it to boot into the GUI.
And there was no shutdown in the login
screen which meant a bit of time tracking
down the actions button to install in the
login screen so as to be able to shutdown
or reboot. Gentoo. I would'nt consider it
if your really new to linux. I've done 10
installs.lol. I've just got the KDE desktop
up. Almost a miracle. Networks up, CDROM
works, but no sounds. Its not easy. I've
only been working with computers since July
2003 on a very steep learning curve.
Gentoo's there. I go back now and then and
have another go at it. I'm not giving in to
the machine.lol. But laughing aside go for
FC1;FC2 or MDK9.2 or MDK10.0. There all
very easy to install on a fresh new hard
drive. Dual booting , take a bit more care.
Post back if you need help with the
partitioning for a dual boot with XP or
ME.Mekon.

thank you for your thoughts. i really appreciate. i will go to the linux website and look around this weeknd. thanks again : )