Ok I have been R&Ding for years , and I have found out that PCLinux Os is the best distro=version of Linux yet. I mean bar none. Except where it was invented on an Amiga 3000. But thats a different story. Free BSD is the same difference and they say so on their website. Just a different way to get to the same place. Linux took the right fork Free BSD took the left. SO PclinuxOS being much easier to use up front, but as powerful as being a server as ever Linux distro can be .. except for a very few which they limit on purpose. The summary is to get PCLINUXOS :

http://www.pclinuxos.com/?page_id=180 page to get it with info.

http://distrib-coffee.ipsl.jussieu.fr/pub/linux/pclinuxos/live-cd/pclinuxos-kde-2012.02.iso direct download - live cd/dvd

Every distro has advantages and disadvantages.

I think the best distro for a newbie is the latest stock, generic ubuntu.

The reason is related to getting help from the community. While ubuntu probably does not have the largest user community, I feel it has the largest community of people that have the patience for beginners.

Also, ubuntu is really good with stability and with their security updates.

I am really fond of Lubuntu and it has been my distro of choice for a while. I have been sticking with the alternate Debian installer.

For desktop systems ubuntu is a better choice. It is easy to install and manage and also to add applications. If you are a techie then you can use redhat kind of distors.

A few updates?

Updated Debian 6.0: 6.0.5 released

May 12th, 2012

Man when they do update which isn't very often they go all out.

Another thing is that you can use the same CD for a long time.

http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120512

First alpha of Debian Installer 7.0, The Debian Administrator's Handbook, Ubuntu Studio at UDS, Ubuntu 12.10 features

Debian GNU/Linux 6.0 "Squeeze" was released over 15 months ago, so it shouldn't be too unreasonable to start focusing one's attention on the next stable Debian - version 7.0 "Wheezy". And indeed, it seems that the first tentative building block of the new release was announced over the weekend. It's the initial build of the Debian Installer for "Wheezy". Cyril Brulebois announced the fact on one of the project's mailing lists: "The Debian Installer team is pleased to announce the first alpha release of the installer for Debian 'Wheezy'. Improvements in this release of the installer: Add WPA support to installer; improvements in link detection and DHCP configuration, which should improve reliability for systems with flaky network cards; release DHCP lease at the end of the install to work around problems with non-RFC compliant DHCP servers; the requirements for hostnames have been clarified, and the parser tightened up to avoid letting through some really dodgy names; added Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) support; Linux kernel version has been updated to 3.2.16; default file system changed to ext4; allow Btrfs /boot partition (GRUB 2 and LILO); add support for Network Block Devices (NBD)." A range of CD, DVD and USB images for a number of architectures, featuring the new Debian installer, can be downloaded from this page.

There is more good news for the users and fans of the world's largest Linux distribution project. After a long and hard fund-raising campaign Debian developers Raphaël Hertzog and Roland Mas have generated a sufficient amount of money to enable them to work full-time on an English translation of Cahier de l'admin Debian. The translation has now been completed and The Debian Administrator's Handbook released: "I am so glad that we managed to complete this project. Roland and I have spent countless hours on this book since December, both for the translation itself and also for all the things that we tend to forget: a nice book cover, a great book layout for the print version, coordinating the work of reviewers, registering as an editor to get an ISBN, etc. I think I will come back to this in a future article because some parts of the story are interesting." The book is available for free online viewing and for direct download (in PDF, EPUB, Mobipocket formats), although the authors hope to receive a small contribution for the electronic version. A dead-tree edition is also available, but it costs US$48.86 + shipping. The Debian Administrator's Handbook is presently the most up-to-date English-language book on Debian GNU/Linux.

* * * * *

Last week's Ubuntu Developer Summit (UDS) in Oakland, USA, provided many interesting articles in the Linux media. One of the participants was Scott Lavender, the founder and lead developer of Ubuntu Studio. Those readers interested in low-latency kernels, multimedia development and related activities should find the author's "confessions" from the conference a refreshing read: "One such meeting resulted in the suggestion that I should attempt to get the Ubuntu kernel team to maintain the -lowlatency kernel instead of the Ubuntu Studio team. The main reason is that the patch to make the changes to the configuration files is very small (a purported 'two lines') and could easy be made into a build option which all could be completely automated. Every security patch would happen concurrently as the main kernels are updated and without any additional effort. In contrast, the Ubuntu Studio team needs to manually update the -lowlatency kernel which is not an inappreciable amount of work, for each security update. And these sometimes lag a bit due to scheduling. This would be a major improvement to remove a significant responsibility and time commitment from our small team." There is also a second article which expands on "Desktop JuJu".

* * * * *

For those readers who didn't have a chance to follow the above-mentioned UDS conference, here is a concise summary of possible Ubuntu 12.10 features, courtesy of OMG! Ubuntu!: "Ubuntu GNOME fans will be excited by word of a potential vanilla GNOME Ubuntu spin (i.e. GNOME-Shell Remix). Elsewhere, GNOME 3.6 will be used as the base of Ubuntu 12.10. Ubuntu’s Ubiquity installer will be 'beefed up' to provide all of the features offered by the 'alternate installer', resulting in the latter being dropped as a download option. The installer will also see the Windows settings migration assistant feature removed. The team conclude that it is too untested and buggy to remain in place. LibreOffice will finally ship with AppMenu support out of the box, making it fully HUD accessible. Jockey, Ubuntu’s current 3rd party driver installer, will be replaced with a 'better version integrated with System Settings'. Ubuntu 12.10 will use the 3.5 kernel, with a view to supporting the 3.6 version after its release. Python 3 will ship on the CD by default, meaning that various default applications and utilities will be rewritten to take advantage of this."
http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20120514#news

Nice update. I totally forgot about distrowatch.

I've been on Ubuntu for a long while now and may be ready to try something different. I find everyone's opinion helpful.

Does anyone know about Arch Linux? I heard the community there is what makes it so great.

Arch Linux is cool if you understand it. It loads fast. You will find some distros you like and come back to them. I am trying Fedora 17 that just came out this morning. I am sure BSD is cool if you understand it. Same way with Gentoo if you understand it.

I am fond of Mephis and it is very easy to use for beginners. much easier to use then ubuntu

Mephis is cool and you can even pick which kernel you want to run on. I tried Mephis 11 and liked it. I thought it was nice of Mephis to help Antix out. Antix is sweet, too.

antiX is a fast, lightweight and easy-to-install linux live CD distribution based on MEPIS and Debian's testing branch for Intel/AMD x86-compatible systems. antiX offers users the "Magic of MEPIS" in an environment suitable for old computers. The goal of antiX is to provide a light, but fully functional and flexible free operating system for both newcomers and experienced users of Linux. It should run on most computers, ranging from 64 MB PII systems with a pre-configured 128 MB swap partition to the latest powerful boxes. 128 MB RAM is the recommended minimum for antiX while the installer needs a minimum of 2.2 GB hard disk space. antiX can also be used as a fast-booting rescue CD. Desktop: Fluxbox, IceWM


MEPIS Linux is a Debian-based desktop Linux distribution designed for both personal and business purposes. It includes cutting-edge features such as a live, installation and recovery CD, automatic hardware configuration, NTFS partition resizing, ACPI power management, WiFi support, anti-aliased TrueType fonts, a personal firewall, KDE, and much more.

I've been trying linux and using Windows dvds for coffee coasters for 12 years now.

ubuntu kicks MS in the NUTZ!!!!

I am a Fedora user. Currently working on building an infrastructrure on an Vmware Esxi server for my house. Cant decide if I want to go with Fedora 16 or 17. I am thinking 16 because it is more stable and there have been issues reported with 17. Then again I might mix some CentOS in there so I can get ready for my RH certification.

I recently converted to the ways of Linux Ubuntu and found it quite refreshing. Some of the software on it brings about a big of a culture shock when you find yourself working without a GUI. Still getting to grips rips the CLI functions, but I prefer it over Windows any day. Much safer and more reliable, the system has never once crashed. It responds so much faster as well. As I get more experienced with Ubuntu I will probably start looking at other versions, maybe even Redhat one day :)

nope its not ubuntu fails in many areas

actually ubuntu has lost ground to pclinuxos in reviews since day one. ubuntu is highly overrated. If you are a techie u can use pclinuxos just as well as even the server suse

The best os is AMIGA OS and of course AROS which is based on AMIGA OS.
In the world there are no I think this or my opinion , that is a cop-out and pc. Get with the program its just yes or no 1s or 0s.