I had to try seven distros before I found one that would work on my laptop. Mandriva 2008.1 is the one that worked on my Acer 5315. When you find the right distro, it makes all the difference in the world.

You're missing the best one: Arch Linux! ;-)

Although, "best" is just an opinion; there's a distro for everyone. That's what is great about Linux - so many flavors. I spent two years searching for the perfect distro: Ubuntu, Debian, Damn Small, Suse, Gentoo, and then finally found the one which was everything I wanted.

You're so wrong about Debian being hard though!

"linux is not desktop os at all
= less software, = bugs, = use at your own risk " 

WTH? Try more software - with programming tools any one can get and use how could there not be? (Check out Sourceforge) Bugs? All software has bugs, at least with open software there are many eyes to find flaws; proprietary relies on those who's living is based on NOT finding flaws. Risk? All software is a risk - in lost time, lost data etc. No single company will pay you back for lost data or time ... try it and get the best set of laughs.

"IMHO Leopard is the best option right now. It looks good, plenty secure, software is el cheapo and muy fantastico, better overall feel than Vista, but you can easily run XP on the side for the games."
Security has nothing directly to do with the OP System - only the user. A user can harden an MS System as hard as any OS/X setup - it just takes experience and time. There are viruses for OS/X, with more coming every day. There have been viruses for Linux for a long time - it's just with Wintel there are so many unknowns (proprietary) that it's very hard to find and plug all the holes in the dike.

Games specifically - I run WINE under Fedora and have World of Warcraft, The Burning Crusade, running beautifully. I also have that machine triple booted for compatibility; a few things won't run on XP nor WINE, so I have one of my old copies of 98 on there too.

I have been giving out CD's of Knoppix and Ubuntu to friends and family who are non-geeks. I myself prefer Slackware, I've known and used it since v 2.04. The biggest thing about distro and version relate to time you are going to put in. Not much? Go with a live cd version. Lots? Go with a full install from bottom up.

I am disappointed no others (FreeBSD, Solaris etc) were mentioned. Ces't La Vie

I find Ubuntu simply wonderful, not to mention simple, not to mention that everything works, not to mention that software updates are frequent and incredibily easy etc etc etc.

I started with fedora 1 ,I leaned lotsa things about linux with it, but starting fedora 4 I've found some problems with application RPM package
I moved to Ubuntu and it's so elgantly designed (using apt-get ,dpkg,synaptic ,aptitude for packaging) and there's lots of ready to install binaries out-there

reply to "games"
the statement "Linux don't have games" is wrong
yes there are not millions of games that can run on LINUX but at least there are hundreds (yep hundreds) I won't tell you were to find theme (if u search you can get them) 
but wait if you want to play alot of games that bad then buy a game-console instead :-/

If You beginning the Journey with Linux - Ubuntu (because of great support) or SuSe (because of friendliness but still with some hidden power) would be best for You.
If You have some experience and would like to try something new: Slackware (my fav), Gentoo (You'll need time to handle this one), or Sabayon (pre-prepared Gentoo).
If You are pretty well experienced, You don't have to read such articles in first place :) second, I'd recommend You FreeBSD. After Years with many linux distro's, I found in BSD what I think linux lost some time ago when started to get more popular - that strange magic which drives Your curiosity, and put fun back into mastering system on Your own.

thanks for the guide, showed it to many friends and family members, very happy with the advice

Something to remember is that Linux is different. Too different for most to be able to make full use of or be as happy as they were with Windows, atleast at first. I have no issues with dual booting Fedora or or Unbuntu (infact Debian set it up for me), but I also have learned enough about Linux and Windows to make everything work on the same system. The biggest thing with Linux is to learn to look things up ("Howto +what you need" in google). You'll be speaking a different language (unless coming from a Mac background), but there is documentation all over the place to learn it. 

If you're looking to try Linux, but aren't comfortable with making a complete blind leap in killing Windows and fully installing Linux, there are alternatives. Look into Knoppix. Knoppix is a Debian based distro that runs from a CD or DVD with no install needed. Just download, burn it to a disc, and then boot the PC from the disc. When you're ready to go back to Windows reboot and remove the disc. Windows will still be there, and be untouched. Also, Knoppix is designed for people who have little or no knowledge of how anything in a computer works - grandma can use it.

After the above if you wish to try another distro, just Google the distro name + "LiveCD". You will end up finding another distro that will run from disc.

Even if you decide that you don't want to use Linux full time I still strongly recommend you use a "Live" distro like Knoppix for web surfing and email. Distro's like Knoppix run from a disc and RAM. When you restart the computer everything that made it onto the computer will disappear. This means that you are nearly immune to spam, spyware, and 99.999% of all viruses. Hows that for identity protection? 

Even if none of the above is your thing, a Live distro allows you to use a computer without a hard drive. This can make for a fast and functional web and email machine. Beyond this if your Windows installation crashes you can use a Live distro to recover files.

I know this has been a book, but a little extra info never hurts. As a system admin Live distros have helped me out greatly, and my users love them for keeping the evil spyware man away. I figure that others will feel the same.

--John

The author has stated that Red Hat is not Free, but charges big bucks. Wrong.

It is as free, but to have Red Hat support, but then you are looking at distros that are one year behind the bleeding edge distributions. One year is reasonable time to make certain that all the bugs are shaken out. 

You can actually download the Red Hat linux or the equivalent CentOS, which is slightly ahead of Red Hat in new features.

Fedora is the testing ground for new Linux features.

Other great distributions are UBUNTU, SUSE, PCLINUXOS, Mandriva and up and coming ones from China

Why use all the automated scripts of Gentoo? Real men do LFS...as in http://www.linuxfromscratch.org

Hey and you might just learn something along the way

You should have left recommendation out of this otherwise good article.

Choosing a Linux flavour is more than a "It's getting better year after year" point.

My experience with Ubuntu was fairly short and dramatic on both a decent desktop and laptop machines. First had troubles finding the proper ATi drivers (until I figured out ATi's site could be helpful after all) and second, oh my it's a laptop (that should be explanatory enough, but read on :))
If you ever get to install a software Intel/ATi soundcard-based modem and run into a "this kernel for having wireless support and that kernel for the usb flash devices" problem you might just get close to realising why Ubuntu (and Linux for that matter) is still not that polished everyone wishes.
Gnome - ye it's pretty, but it doesn't have a decent archive and file manager, nor media player, it has GTK and so on (and in Ubuntu's case - it doesn't even come with MP3/4/DivX support!)
Frankly I still can't realise why did they choose (for their main distro) that non-standart, everything-but-convinient shell instead of the Windows-like, much more beautifull KDE which everyday users can learn in a matter of hours. And don't sell me that "KDE is a resource hog" stuff - unless you do have an old Dell PC with "Designed for Windows 95 logo" or something like - newer versions of KDE can run smooth enough on every decent PC.

My point is - avoid awarding that gutsy winner until you've tried it on more than one platform (and keeping in mind the average computer experience of the general audience these days)...

P.S. My personal choice for near user-friendly desktop Linux is PCLinux OS.

... was that, for an ignorant, lazy guy whose mind has been rotted by years of Windows addiction, several successive versions of SuSE have installed smoothly alongside my W2K and XP partitions. Whereas Ubuntu (Gutsy Gibbon) cheerfully overwrote both my user data partitions first time I tried to install it. So I'm sticking with the arguably more idiot-proof SuSE.

The review is brilliant except I don't like the notion that Fedora is very geeky and always in the alpha-beta stage. I've been using it for the last 5 years (even more considering I started with RH 7.1) and I'm almost satisfied by it.

If you want some proprietary things and good advice, read here: http://www.fedorafaq.org/

Nice article, not 100% correct in distro description, but the final statement is true :)

One little remark, in Gentoo you don't compile , it's done automatically by packaging system. not more complicated then deb or rpm. It takes considerably more time, but you gain 15-30% performance boost

I've found windows users more comfortable using the KDE centric OpenSuSE offerings. I myself find Ubunto fine for something akin to kiosk, install it and never change it set ups, but with its extensive repositories, and very easy setup and configuration applets (think windows control panel), SuSE has been my personal choice for a number of years, and the distro I most heartily reccommend to others.

On another note, I recently got a new Dell 1720 laptop (1920 x1200 screen, Intel HDA audio, and Intel 4965 802.11n WiFI), and SuSE is the only distro I got to boot up properly on it, AND by going with some of the newer kernels available in the repository, had EVERYTHING working in less then an hour.

One thing I do have to say about Ubunto, is that there seems to be a lot more on-line discussions specific to solving issues with Ubunto then any other distro. I don't think this is so much a statement about Ubunto vs any other distro, just that there are perhaps a lot more people getting their first look at Linux by way of Ubunto.

Thanks for a great and well thought out article. Just felt obliged to "bump" the option of SuSE.

Additional plus for Ubuntu: it's trendy. This is an advantage because you're more likely to have friends who are using it and can help with the stickier bits. Sort of like the Windows Mate Support option.

Hi. I hope your article has a follow up with other free OSs like *BSDs :)

I'm surprised you did not mention you can download a live CD of most distributions. A live CD allows you to boot your PC from the CD and run the distribution from the CD without making any changes to your PC.
This is far more flexible than manually installing each distribution to find one you like.
E.g. If you don't like ubuntu's interface, just bin the CD and try kubuntu, PCLinuxOS or one of the other distributions.

I might just do Ubuntu... 

I tried, I believe, mandrake version 6, 7, 8? So many years ago and, at that point, would rather take chances with windows' fleeting stability. 

Wish me luck! 


Ubintu's new distros no longer come in an 'install' and 'live' version. Instead you get just a single disk. You boot the system from the CD into a Linux desktop, the installation being an application you can run from that desktop. This is a very ingenious arrangement that really allows you to 'try before you buy'. The installation is smooth, with the disk partition being a lot better organized than I'm used to.

As a bonus if you put the distro CD into a Windows system it will run up a selection of popular applications such as Firefox.

Wot? No BSD?

After playing with 20 different variations of linux I've come to the same conclusion. There is also a huge support base for ubuntu as well.

Suggestion to those trying to find solutions using a search engine search by build version or build name (ex: dapper, edgy, feisty, gutsy,... soon hardy)

Merry Christmas to all :D

Debian is as user-friendly as Ubuntu. It has a great world-wide network of developers and maintainers, a ton of mirrors, apt packaging and GNOME or KDE. There is little operation difference. Debian is available on more architectures and has far more packages available.

see http://debian.org

hoorah for linux, but what can it do?

IMHO Leopard is the best option right now. It looks good, plenty secure, software is el cheapo and muy fantastico, better overall feel than Vista, but you can easily run XP on the side for the games.

I'd really like to use Linux. I love the idea of it, but if you want to use your computer for more than a web browser and a word processor... it just isn't there for you with the lack of 3rd party apps. 

Anyway, Windows will always be king as long as the other OS's cannot play video games. If you find yourself arguing with this statement you are... just... plain... wrong.

In a year or so Vista will have 50% market share because video games will no longer run on XP, 2 years from now Vista will be ubiquitous and XP will be on the way out. The only way to dethrone MS is by offering a competitive video games solution, an alternative to DX... and good luck with that.

"You don't need much - just the same sort of spec as for XP. Half a gig of RAM, although more won't hurt, a 2GHz CPU and 20G of hard disk will be plenty."

K/ubuntu "feisty" (7.0.4) running fine here on a 900 MHz Slot TBird (Athlon), with 512MB RAM, 10-g partition (with separate, 1g swap).

I don't imagine xp would run very well on that -- Nt4 and 2K both run fine on it.

Dual monitors (Radeon 7000) and wacom tablet enabled.

I did a dual boot too (Linux boot loader on floppy, to avoid complications). Anyone who has run multiple versions of Windows could probably manage it.

My preference is for KDE as it 'seems' more sophisticated than gnome (even though certain features e.g. windows volume mounting, and printing, are actually less well developed, atm).

I know it doesn't get the media attention that the big boys do, but Puppy Linux (formerly PuppyOs)
is small, easy to use, and 'Just Works(TM)'.

It is designed from the ground up to be user friendly, simple to run and runs on almost any hardware. (If it'll run Windows 95, it'll usually run Puppy) 

Puppy's first bootup offers help tips onscreen, and automatically launches a help page. Plus, it's use of wizards makes setup a snap, and its user community rivals Ubuntu's.

One of its many sites, and one of the best, is http://puppylinux.ca/ . 

Btw, I have nothing to do with Puppy, other than being a very happy user. :)

I'm perfectly happy with the ghastly Vista thank you. The one that everyone seems to like apart from the MS-hating poser boys and journos trying to make a name. It runs my software and it plays my games. DRM? Never heard of it, only an idiot would buy a DRM'd piece of media.

Sorry, you missed a very important Linux Distro. Debian is the father of Linux, but MEPIS is the father of Desktop Linux. It was the 1st to have an easily installable live CD with preconfigured multi media apps and codecs. 

MEPIS is widely acclaimed as one of the easiest and most stable desktop distros. In an artice for possible new Linux users, it is strange that it should not be mentioned.

Version 7 was issued yesterday, a perfect chance for those that wish to get some Linux experience to see what the latest and greatest of the Linux world has to offer

Very nice article. Found enough interesting information although I've been using at least three Linux distro's. Respect!

Another way to try Ubuntu is with a nice idea called Wubi: it's an .exe that runs in your Windows and installs Ubuntu on your existing NTFS partition. Once installed at boot you can choose which OS boot from, Win or Ubuntu. It's NOT Ubuntu emulated in Windows, it's just a way to install Ubuntu without repartitioning the hard disk. Ubuntu is not for you? Uninstall Wubi and you're done.
Be sure to serch a little on the Wubi forum for the right .exe to install Ubuntu 7.10, though...

linux = less software
linux = less hardware supports
linux = bugs
linux = simple task will convert to impossible task
linux = use at your own risk

If you like "secure" think just don't use ubuntu. The ubuntu has so many think that need internet connection to show the power. Use other Linux. My optinion is Vista is getting better so does Ubuntu. But Ubuntu is worst than Vista. Of cource many linux distro better than Vista, but that's no ubuntu. Ubuntu has been more alien that vista. Ubuntu is copying from windows, linux, etc to make their apperance alien. My Dell D630 has been 99% ready to use in Mandriva 2008.0 with Compiz Fusion active AND GET HANG WITH UBUNTU =)) (Ubuntu is the DELL Linux Official). 
So? Choose your destany :))