With the growth of Linux rising at a slow and steady rate one of the most common questions I see is from users asking which distro is best for them. On a Forum with Linux users you will notice that the above question generally gets bombarded with hundred of opinions. However, its quite common that most of these opinions given out by posters don;t meet the actual need of the user. One of the most frequent causes for this is the lack of information. Recently I posted a thread on a Tech Forum I frequent with some basic information you need to give to facilitate others to explain to you why a certain distro might be a good choice.
What is your purpose ?
Are you looking to just casually play around with it here and there? If so why install? Why not just use a Linux Live CD. No changes are made to your Win system and you get to goof around in Linux as well. Or better yet why not install it on a VM?
What is your system configuration?
We don’t know if you have a C2Q or if you have a P533 for that matter. If I were to suggest you OpenSuse / Ubuntu / Mint you would be very angry at the results if you we’re running a box with a 533 Mhz Processor. If I were to ask you to install NimbleX on a C2Q with 4 Gb memory again it would be rather silly because you could easily install some of the more heavier feature rich distros.
What is your intent?
Are you doing this for Office work, Entertainment or to learn Linux. Mandriva and Ubuntu sort of have a way of giving GUIS for every single task there is. Hell I didn’t even know how to create a user using CLI till I used Arch. That being said if you don’t want to use CLI why would I ask you to install Arch. You would scream bloody murder and chase me with a pitchfork. You tend to learn more about Linux commands based on the amount of tweaking you do. So keep that in mind also.
How far are you willing to go and whats your experience level?
Trust me when I say Gentoo is not for beginners. Also trust me when I say that Linux Hardcore folks would set me on fire if I told them to install Ubuntu. The main question is how far are you willing to go. It took me a well one day to configure Arch. Are you willing to go that far.How about compile a distro for a few days? Or do you want a ready made distro which works great out of the box?
Other factors you might want to put in is what kind of internet connection you have or are you downloads somehow limited. Want to use this box for Education also? etc. I’m pretty sure that with more data it makes the job of pointing you in the right direction much easier.
(1 votes, average: 3 out of 5)
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