Best Free Linux for a begginer

[mak2112]

I have been a Microsoft person all my life, but I would like to start using a Linux loaded PC at home, so I can try it out. Can anyone suggest where i can get a free version of linux for my pc, and maybe where i can easily find documentation on how to use Linux?

thanks

 

[clonny2]

you can download and burn lots of linux isos and then install. You might also want to try one of the live isos. This is a cd that runs linux inside of a ramdisk, so nothing gets installed onto your system at all.

Suse has a livecd.

http://www.suse.com/us/private/download/suse_linux/

or you can go to

http://www.linixiso.org

>---------------------------------------Lawrence Feldman
SR. QA. Engineer SNAP Appliance
lfeldman@snapappliance.com

 

[chipperMDW]

> where i can easily find documentation on how to use Linux?

http://www.tldp.org

 

[sleipnir214]

If you're looking for a place to find multiple Linux distributions for download, try:

http://www.linuxiso.org/

Want the best answers? Ask the best questions!

TANSTAAFL!!

 

[SirNuke]

Both Mandrake, SuSE, Fedora (red hat), and Lycoris are, in my opinion, the easiest free linuxes. Lycoris is probually the easiest out all of these, though the other three are probually more powerful

 

[jwenting]

If you want easy there's little to beat Ubuntu. And if you want free it doesn't get much better either.
Not only do they have a free download version of the full installation (and a live CD to try things out first) but they'll ship for free (no shipping cost even) worldwide.

Installation is a breeze (in fact it's the first distro ever to correctly configure my laptop with all hardware detected and supported...) and it performs well.

Don't expect a thousand text editors, hundred terminal emulators, 50 window managers and 10 office applications to be pumped onto your harddisk without any links to launch them from the desktop though.
You get OpenOffice, XTerm and Gnome and it all just works.
Of course you can install what you like afterwards (though source installs might require installing some support packages first for the headerfiles).

 

[jstreich]

All Linux is free, what is not is software that may be bundled with the package -- Lindows, for instance, cost the price of the Lindows programs that allow you to run Windows program in Linux. Linux is released under the GNU/GPL, which means you can freely distribute/copy and modify the operating system as you see fit.

Debian has one of the best package managers out there, but the install can be a bit much for a beginer because you have so many package options.

RedHat is fairly user friendly, but has a habit of putting thing in non-standard places.

SuSE and Mandrake I've not used personally but they come highly regarded by most of the comunities I've seen.

DSL (Damn Small Linux) is a fairly good portable linux that runs from memory and fits on a single CD... I keep a DSL disk around becase it works as a way to boot windows machines with a REAL OS when needed, and also to use as a resvue disk when things get bad.