For me the answer depends more on the newcomer. Absolutely critical
would be finding out what aps they currently use under Windows and how
important it is to them that they can run these aps. Lots of questions
about how acceptable it is to have a functional equivalent (e.g., the
GIMP vs. Photoshop).
If they're technically proficient and especially if they're interested
in "bleeding edge" but have just never used Linux then, yes, I'd point
them at Fedora. Depending on how technically proficient they are, I may
point them at the (current - 1) release of Fedora Core instead just so I
know they won't run into too many problems. Someone less technical and
who just wants an alternative to Windoze I'd point at RHEL workstation,
Mandrivia, SuSE, etc. That is, a reasonably priced, finished
distribution that has full support for at least a little while.
I think the original posting in this thread specifically mentioned
laptops which are their own can of worms due to hardware compatibility
issues. As an example, if somebody really needs WiFi for their laptop
and the wireless NIC isn't supported either natively or with ndiswrapper
then no distro is going to work for them. Same for accelerated video
and lots of other hardware issues that only seem to come up with laptops.
Cheers,
Dave
--
Politics, n. Strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles.
-- Ambrose Bierce
