Linux Questions...

Hi guys,
I've been thinking about installing Linux on my computer for quite some time now, but I'm always put off at the last minute. Which version of Linux is the best for a complete Linux newbie? I've heard Linspire is good and it looks quite like windows XP but are there any others people would recommended over this? Also, How easy is it to dual boot with Windows XP and Linux? Could someone post me a link to a good guide please!
Cheers

 

The distribution I used for the first time was Mandrake... I'm sure some Linux users out there will think that it was a reasonable first choice - others won't - in my experience Linux users tend to fall in love with a certain distribution at the expense of all others

Mandrake has a reasonable packaging system, so if you are connected to the net its easy to locate and install software you want - it handles the dependancies for you too... I don't think you'd go too far wrong with Mandrake - but at the end of the day just my humble thoughts on the matter...

As for dual booting - I've never done this so Im not sure - I'd imagine a different boot loader is key, but Im sure there'll be plenty of people here with more information on this subject...

 

Oh also meant to say.. .make sure you check support for all your hardware with the distribution readme's first...
theres nothing worse than trying to get X or something running and being unable to because your Video card isn't supported...

 

I don't know I would go so far to say it looks a lot like XP...even KDE, which looks enough like Windows to make my stomach churn(why go Linux at that point), doesn't remind me of XP.

My main beef with Linux is that even if there is hardware, or driver support, it may not work. All too often, my Audigy 2 is detected by Linux distros, only to not have it work on boot.

I don't see Linux as a bad OS, but I do see it as a toy. On the other hand, if you want to get your hands really dirty, I'd reccomend a BSD(Unix) distro. Popular ones would be FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Darwin, etc. Considerably faster(multi-cpu environments are slower), but not as user friendly, it is my opinion that these are the real deal. In addition, you can have Linux and Unix support, which doubles your software support.