Which one?

[Andybebad]

I'm going to put linux on my computer and I was wondering which one is the easist to install?

will you be dual booting with windows?

my suggestion is mandrake

[John Prophet]

a good question..which is asked quite often with varying opinions given.

One POSSIBLE thing to do is check at your local public library because some of them have books with linux cd's explaininghow to install etc. My library has a redhat book and cd ...I think it is like one version older than the current one but it could be good to learn with etc.

this place----> http://www.distrowatch.com/ has lists of all the various distros and I think you can search em with different filters such as "easiest for beginners" etc

JP

[Andybebad]

Originally posted by GroundZero3
will you be dual booting with windows?

Yes

[Jon11582]

Easiest that I know of is Knoppix.

It doesnt really install, You can boot right off the CD and it acutally gets to the desktop in less than 2 minutes without putting anything on the harddrive, along with a usuable offfice app and 1.7GB of accessable programs (Dont ask me how they do it). This is good if you just want to see what Linux feels like and work in it a little bit to see if its something you want to go on with. Its fully functional, and actually has the nicest GUI that I know of right after install, but since its CD and RAMdrive based, you cant save any configurations to keep at a following reboot. It picked up my mouse, keyboard, network, power management, video card, sound, wireless, and just about anything I can think off on my laptop without any intervention from me. It even mounts all your windows drives automatically, no matter the file system. Its a great option for anyone just getting started.

For an actual installation of Linux, I recently came upon SuSE 9.0. I've only tried this and Mandrake, and prefer the SuSE installer and OS a lot more. You can either purchase this at the store (Pro = $70, Personal = $40, I hear they come with excellent reference books that are worth the price alone), or do what I did, and do an FTP install of it. You download a 20MB iso, burn that to a CD, boot with it, pick what you want from the installer and itll download just those components, straight off thier FTP without any intervention from the user. I believe that the FTP install is configurable up to the professional edition of SuSE retail, minus a few non-open source apps. Full detailed instructions can be found here. Its a little slow to boot, maybe because I picked too many components, but otherwise, I really like SuSE 9.0. Its the first Linux that really impressed me (Before I discovered Knoppix) and has a home on my harddrive.

[cunokyle]

In my experience, SuSE has been the easiest distro to install if you have a copy of the distro. I am not sure how easy the ftp install would be though. Mandrake is also a really easy install.

[Jon11582]

If you had no documents, itd be pretty tough. With this walkthrough that I linked above, the hardest part is burning an ISO and booting from it. From there it seems just like the retail version installer, except it takes longer (~1-3 hours on broadband) due to having to download all the components realtime in the installer.

Tip - it says to make a /boot partition with 50mb. If you do that, the te GRUB bootloader wont install for some reason. If you want to customize the partitioning, just make a swap partition 500 or 1000 MB in size, space allowing, and the rest of the space you delegate as linux space as "/".

[flashingcurser]

Other than "easy to install" what do you want to get out of linux? The beauty of Linux is that each distro is tailored to certain interests, what are you interested in doing?

Just some thoughts

[Mead]

There are about 40 variations of this thread too, so if you use the search feature at the top you'll find a bunch of threads about this that you might find useful.
Personally im using fedora core and connectiva. Lycoris is by far the easiest to install and use that ive ever come across but its a little outdated for my bleeding edge tastes