Which Flavor? -- Picking a first version

Saying "I want to get Linux" is like saying "I want a dog." OK, which one? A tiny morkie? A big goofy Afghan? There is a lot of advice out there on how to choose a package. What do you use the computer for? How much Linux do you know?" How much general computer stuff do you know? It all leaves out one thing: they're all different, and your computer will like some of them more than others.

The sole criteria for choosing a Linux distro for a new user should be this: will it work on my computer with a minimum of hair-pulling?

There's only one way to find out. Try them all until you get one you -- and your computer -- like.

Search Wikipedia for "Live Linux Distributions". Get a bunch of them, burn them to CDs, and try them.

A "Live" distro is a version of Linux that can be run from a cd or USB key that will not make any changes to your computer. You plug it in, boot up, play around, and when you restart, Windows comes up as though nothing ever happened.

Be patient. Live CDs take a long time time to boot. What you're looking for is:

1. Boots with a minimum of weird error messages.
2. Picks up your sound, video, usb ports and network card with a minimum of hassle.
3. Will eventually get to a desktop by itself if left unsupervised.
4. Will boot up the same way and do the same thing more than once.

Since some distros took as long as 15 minutes to get to a desktop. I don't wana have to stand there and micromanage it. Some distros were spotty, and out of 5 reboots, would only work right 3 times. Other times it would not pick up some or all of the hardware, require a lot of tweaking to get cetain hardware to work, crash, or load the desktop and refuse to do anything else. None of this means any one version is better than any other.

I started out with NimbleX, Puppy, OpenSUSE, Ubuntu and Fedora 9. NimbleX was spotty, Puppy needed too much manual configuring, OpenSUSE didn't pick up any hardware, and Ubuntu just barfed.

But Ubuntu gave me the insight regarding trying different distros. I spent three hours trying to get it to work.. But I have an old rule of thumb for software: if I can solve a problem by using someone else's product, there you have it.

So Fedora 9 was the winner. I loaded with no hassle, picked up all my hardware, and did it again several times. I installed permanently, and after only a couple hccups, it occurred to me that it worked better than XP on my laptop.

You may have different results. If you get a burp, do a little research and try to fix it The best way to start is by Googling the EXACT error mesage you get, or by seeing where it hung and Googling "(Linux Flavor) hung (the last thing on the screen when it hung)" or that sort of thing.

You'll start to learn how Linux works, and will find yourself increasingly able to step ahead of or around minor issues, and Linux in general will begin to seem less cryptic.