When I first started with Linux, I ordered a set of distros from one of
the Linux CD houses - Redhat, Debian, Slackware. I knew nothing of Unix
commands, not even how to list a directory. I installed each distro,
and much preferred Debian, although it did take a while to tailor it to
my liking. The installation didn't seem harder than Redhat, just more
user intensive. I can't really say why I liked it better, but to me it
just fealt the best of the ones I tried.
I decided to learn some bash commands, and also learned how to do some
elementary scripting, after which I thought this Linux thing might not
be so bad after all. I also decided that I would learn vi, and was
frustrated to find that once I started the program I coudn't even find a
way to exit it without rebooting my computer (or so I thought at the
time). Now I almost always use vi (in this case vim) when I want to do
some editing and don't want to use a more graphical abiword.
Later on I tried Mandrake and Suse (from their demo disk), but Debian
always seemed to be the best to me, and with a little bit of tweaking
was set up how I wanted it. I've since upgraded to the unstable branch
for now probably 2 years, and I don't have any problems to speak of, but
I'm not a heavy user (other than my weight). Every now and then when I
feel like it, I just do an apt-get update, then apt-get upgrade and
update all my progs to the latest versions from unstable.
Of all the distros I've seen, the easiest to install was Knoppix, but
that is a live version from CD that doesn't use your HD. It's pretty
cool to have a KDE system up and running in just a minute or two, though.
I agree with Robin that it all depends on why you want to run Linux, and
that what you are familiar with will determine to a large extent which
distro you favor.
scott
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