Best Linux OS for newbie

Hi all, back alter a long time… How you all doing? Since a while ago I’ve been tempted to set up Linux on my home desktop. I’m not experienced at all with Linux at all and what I realy want is a parallel OS to Windows that isn’t hard to operate (basicly for web surfing, word processing, music and other media). You know the kina of OS I would use when I’m not doing anything super heavy like gaming… I wan’t it most of all because that way I don’t have to worry so much about security.
Well thanks for your time

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I never tried it, but it seems that Ubuntu is usually considered the best distro for newbies.

Good luck.

PS: I think I will try it myself.

A lot of the more modern Linux distros are much more user-friendly than their older counterparts from even a few years back. Granted, they don't all hold your hand through day-to-day life like Windows does (or at least tries to), but you don't need to be a horn-rimmed, pocket protector bearing sysadmin to start it up any more either.

My personal recommendation--for no real reason whatsoever, other than that I was using it for a while (because it was one of the first I came across and I was getting impatient) is Debian. It's a good system; quite a large download if you want to get all of it, but as good as any and better than a lot of Linux distros out there.

Another good distro is Fedora. It used to be RedHat, but they split it up from the enterprise version a while ago. Haven't tried it out in it's current state, but I used to work with RedHat ~6/7, and it was great. About the only thing that sets Fedora/RedHat apart that I can tell is that it uses RPM tech for software installation--think kinda like Windows Installers, but more text based and for Linux. A good amount of the software for Linux comes like this (or as straight source code you need to compile--that's always a thrill ), so you may want to consider a RedHat based distribution because of that.

You may want to check out www.linuxlinks.com... or www.linux.org.... Those are a couple of good lists to go through and see what might match what you need. The linux.org link has a (very, very simplistic) filter where you can base everything off of what you're going to be doing with the system; might be handy.

One last thing, that you probably already know, make sure you get an Intel (x86) supporting distro. You'll have lots of fun trying to set up a PPC or Sparc based distribution on a formerly-Windows machine.

Wow, thank's. I'll start downloading both Ubuntu and Debian (one after the other and try them both (I guess it will keep me buissy for a while). I'll post here if I run into any trouble. Thanks again.

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I have yet another question... Is it possible to run internet sharing from a Linux Pc to a mac with OS 9?