which Linux to choose?

Question

I want to try out Linux on my desktop but I'm not sure which 1 to use. I put another motherboard in so at the moment the HD has windows7 on it but it needs a reinstall. As I said, want to try Linux... Any suggestions??

Answer 1

It depends on what you do with your computer.



1. If you just read web and stalk pretty girls then ubuntu is the way to go.

2.If you want bleeding edge and in other words broken distro to play with choose fedora.

3.If you want develop software choose CentOS or RHEL or debian

4. If you want serve your own blog choose debian, CentOS

5. If you want to hack "cat" or "rm"'s code choose FREEBSD

6. If you want to steal bandwidth from your neighbor's wifi then choose Black track linux

7. If you need a free platform to do heavy duty number crunching choose Scientific Linux( out of the Box R platform is a gem)

8. If you want to hack linux itself choose gentoo.

9. If you wanna brag about your box choose LSF

Answer 2

The absolutely most user friendly distros I can name off the top of my head are Linux Mint and Ubuntu.



If you want to get a bit deeper go with Fedora



If your goal is to really learn linux, and don't mind having to RTFM and solve issues on your own as you come across them something like Slackware would serve you best.



Generally the tradeoff is user friendliness versus knowledge and user friendliness versus control. (E.g. ubuntu you generally want to stick with software available in their apt repos whereas with slackware you're generally building your software from source. You have more control over what is on a slackware system and how it works, but you need to be willing to get into the nuts and bolts of it.)



*EDIT -- @Arif -- it's LFS! (Linux from Scratch) and frankly it's a fun little project. #Brag

Answer 3

Check out Distrowatch



http://distrowatch.com/

Answer 4

PCLinuxOS is often overlooked, but I find it easy to use and everything works.



There are plenty of versions to choose from as well.