--- Les Mikesell <lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On Thu, 2006-09-21 at 15:26 +0100, Anne Wilson > wrote: > > My£0.02-worth :-) > > > > While some say that Ubuntu, Mandriva or PCLinuxOS > are more newbie-friendly, > > it's worth bearing in mind that most people come > to computing with friends on > > tap for hand-holding. Those of us that have come > to linux depending on lists > > like this are generally more confident (maybe more > competent, too?) but it is > > very likely that your friend will feel in real > need of help in the early > > stages. > > > > I think, therefore, that your comfort-level in > supporting a different distro > > has to be borne in mind. I'm not saying you > couldn't - there will be more > > similarities than differences - but you may not > wish to take on an extra > > layer of responsibility. > > On the other hand, you know the useful life-span of > a fedora > installation. > Do you want to recommend that to a friend that needs > hand-holding? > Been watching this thread for a while... I was new to linux last June/July. I tried many distros including ubuntu, fedora, suse, and mandriva. Nothing worked perfect on my laptop at the time. I just didn't see what the ubuntu hype was about. I picked Fedora because of its cutting edge tech, flexibility, community, and gaining some familiarity with Red Hat stuff. FC4 took work to get working on my laptop. It worked flawlessly on my desktop though. FC5 starting with the 2.6.17 kernel with bcm43xx works as good or better than windows on that laptop in most ways. ndiswrapper still works better than bcm43xx, but bcm43xx does work. Sure I might have a little more tech skills than a typical newbie, but I still knew nothing about linux before that. FC5 might not be the distro for grandma, but it would be fine for a lot of others. ..especially if they have a friend who can help them. The best advice is to have him try things out. LiveCD's .. maybe let him try your system, if possible. I would say stick to a distro with a good package manager. Although I don't like YAST, a lot of people seem to and Suse does have a solid, polished distro. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com
