Which distro for a newbie?

[frankwick]

I have new hardware and want to use Linux as a desktop system.

Now, tell me which distro you like for a newbie and why.

Thanks.

[furrycat]

A friend of mine is totally clueless about Linux. He installed Mandrake. Said it was really easy.

A quick search for the terms "newbie and distribution" on this board reveals more praise for Mandrake.

Maybe you should give it a try.

[frankwick]

Thanks for the reply. I did a search and came up with some stuff, but I wanted the most current responses.

It appears Mandrake is one of the best options to for us newbies. Any idea when 8.0 will be out? There website isn't that great and doesn't have any dates. 8.0 is in in beta 2.

[FamMan]

RedHat is a good distro to start out with. I started out with it. Hardware support is awesome. Detects most new hardware during install.
Mandrake and SuSE are also great. Just pick one and go with it. Try more than one.
I tested most of the popular distros. I like RedHat the most.

[CQ]

I have Mandrake 6.5 and installation went smoothly (once I got the partitions set up).

http://discussions.linuxplanet.com/cool.gif

Like FamMan said, just pick one and go.