I am newbie to linux to and I tried several version of Linux over the past several years. They all installed fairly easily except for LinSpire for some reason after it would boot up after install and I would nothing but a screen full of 10101010.
I have tried Lorma Linux, Yoper, Lycoris, Mandrake, and several others I cant think of at the moment.
Mandrake has always installed easily and detected all of my hardware where most the of the linux distros wouldnt detect my network card, but it ran slow on my machine cuz I was using a 450 at the time. I bought Suse Pro edition and got frustrated when it would kill my DSL connection after 3 seconds, but it installed easily too and both Mandrake and Suse can have partition resizers if you are already using Windows and boot managers for dual boots.
I just didnt have the patience at the time to learn Linux, so I gave after maybe using them for a day.
The best Linux for newbies in my opinion is Xandros 2.0 which I am using right now. I bought a new hard drive to install linux on it so I decided to install the Xandros Open Circulation edition and I have been using it straight for a week. I have been using nothing but Xandros for the past few days. I cant tell you how impressed I am with this version of Linux. The installion couldnt be easier just four 4 clicks and boom. Only problem here was when it booted up I got the same screenfull of 10101010 like I did with Linspire, but fortunately I had created a Xandros boot disk and when I booted up with it, it went right to the desktop and I have been using it eversince. Even though its free it still has a lot of software on it. The Opera browser and you can download Mozilla, and you can also use Konqueror, but u gotta find the bin file first cuz it isnt in the menu for some reason. It also had the Xine media player and multiplatform chat program, a CD burner, etc.
I had a problem with a wireless USB network device, so I installed my network card and used my DSL connections and I was able to surf the net.
The Xandros Network is a great way of installing software u just click on the program u want and Xandros takes care of the rest. Its best if you use the software from the Xandros Network, but being the curious person that I am I downloaded programs from other websites .tar, .deb source files, etc and sometimes I can get them to work and sometimes I cant, but I am learning about linux, so it all balances out.
Xandros after all is debian based, but user friendly. If you are newbie try the Open circulation edition, its free so why not?
I may never go back to Windows now.
