Best Linux distro for n00bs?

ubuntu is really easy and comes with a lot preconfigured.
It’s like an “out of the box” distro. Good to start out.

Still, don’t expect it to “just work” heheheh, though you may be lucky – they’ve come a long way in the past few years WRT to user-friendliness.

Can’t comment on openSUSE.

Flip a coin. I like SUSE better. Most prefer Ubuntu.

and yeah. try both.

the more experience you get, the better you will be able to make an informed decision.

Another vote for Ubuntu.

I find Ubuntu to be the easiest to get all the hardware working properly.

But both are free and easy to download. Try each of them out and see what supports your hardware best.

Do you actually want to learn about Linux, or do you want an unobtrusive OS that “just works” without too much faffing around?

If it’s the former, I’d suggest Debian or Fedora (my personal favourite). If it’s the latter, I’d suggest Ubuntu or Mint.

Thanks guys.

I am typing this on Fedora right now. I like it, but I wouldn’t call it user friendly. I’m lookin for an OS for my mom who can barely send an email, let alone use Windows.

I’ve never heard of Mint…<heads over to google…> I’m def leaning towards Ubuntu, but something about openSUSE sounds pretty cool. I think I’m gonna have to try that one, too :P

Ubuntu. They have dummied it WAYYY down with all sort of annoying pop-ups about “do you really want to close this terminal window”, etc.

oh no! really? that was my favorite thing about linux – you hit the delete button once and its gone. no stupid second guessing, lol. i guess that would make it easier, though, if you are used to windows. bah windows!

Why would a N00b be in a terminal window?

there are probably different levels of n00b lol. i still consider myself a linux n00b, but use terminal windows quite often, especially in fedora. i can never figure out how to do things in fedora without terminal windows, lol!

@jaytkay: Why wouldn’t a N00b be in a terminal window? They still have to accomplish things.

@lilikoi: Why would you want to do them without a terminal window? The mouse and gui-interfaces are slow. GUI’s are really bad if your connection is slow or laggy.

I love terminal windows, but I don’t think my mom even knows what one is.

@lilikoi: Didn’t your Mom ever use a TRS-80 or CPM/DR-DOS/NOVELL DOS?

no. she went from this to windows.

I’d try Linux Mint or Jolicloud. Mint is supposed to be a more user friendly version of Ubuntu and Jolicloud is made for Netbooks. The benefit of it is it’s has fully integrated WINE support meaning you can run most Windows applications on it. And it’s also extremely easy to navigate and use.

One thing to think about is support. A lot of people know Ubuntu and are willing to help without being dicks that scream n00b.

My first Linux experience was a PowerPC version of Gentoo. All my questions were met with people being complete dicks in IRC.

In addition, the Ubuntu community is very (re)active and quickly searching their forums you’ll find the problems (and their solutions) for your owns.

Gentoo is great if you want to (be forced to) learn.

The learning curve is more like a learning wall.

I recommand Ubuntu ‘coz it’s easy to install than open SUSE.It does come with tons of built-in softwares(same as openSUSE)!but in both the OSes you have to install the multimedia codecs manually which becomes a headache when you are using a very old version of either of the OSes.
I don’t recommand openSUSE because its mainly used as server OS and is not of much help for the home use.