The Gun Counter

I've been thinking about a linux box for a while, and now, Windows 10 has me thinking about it again.

What's the easiest/most reliable distro for a newb? I'm not opposed to learning, but I'd rather do it on a working system than have to do lots of learning just to get it running.

Here are some considerations:
- I'd probably get a relatively new, but not very powerful laptop off of craigslist or a pawn shop, then wipe it and install linux.
- Probably for the kids' use to browse the internet and use Open Office
- I'd like it to play DVD's (movies) and CD's (music)
- I'd like it to play ripped music
- I'd like it to work with my router
- I'd like it to support an external monitor

I'm guessing most distro's would support all that, but I have no idea.

Fire away!

I'd have to recommend Linux Mint. I'm using Mint 17.2 MATE edition right now to post this.

The trickiest hardware to ensure Linux support for is generally laptop-related, because those are lower volume and more proprietary than general PC bits. Whatever you buy, research Linux compatibility first to be sure.

But Mint runs great on my 6 year old cpu, and the most recent update (from 17.1 to 17.2) actually seems to have come with performance improvement, especially in terms of reduced memory usage.

+1 for the latest LTS edition of Mint. I have put it on several machines, both modern compact desktops and old-ish laptops, and it worked right out of the box each time.

Installation is painless and fast - about 30 mins from bare metal to a working, fully featured operating system and applications. Add five minutes to install the flashblock and adblock plus add-ons in Firefox, plus Google Chrome browser for watching YouTube videos, and all is good to go.

Certainly better than the full day I wasted on installation and tweaking, the last time I set Windows up (Mrs Denis, for reasons unfathomable, wanted Win7 on her desktop machine).

Greg wrote:The trickiest hardware to ensure Linux support for is generally laptop-related, because those are lower volume and more proprietary than general PC bits. Whatever you buy, research Linux compatibility first to be sure.

If it booted from a bootable USB, would that indicate that everything was OK?

Weetabix wrote:If it booted from a bootable USB, would that indicate that everything was OK?

Testing candidate laptops by booting from USB or live CD has always worked fine for me. Some years ago, I had one oddball machine, a Fujitsu-Siemens that I bought shop soiled at the local supermarket for cheap, that had weird timing issues, and couldn't realiably boot any flavour of Linux I tried, though it was rock solid running Win98.

Modern distros seem to work just fine on reasonably modern portable hardware. I installed Mint on a refurbished Lenovo T400 I bought a few weeks ago, and that both ran and installed perfectly off the live CD, once I'd RTFM and figured out that there is a *physical switch* on the T400 that enables and disables the wi-fi hardware. The T400 is a really nice laptop, by the way, and probably cost a small fortune when it was new. It works very nicely under Mint, especially once all the animated bells and whistles in the GUI are turned off.

My old still-made-by-IBM X-series Thinkpad is the next candidate for the new lease of life through Linux upgrade, to be followed by my Asus Eee.

On really old laptops, I'd try Puppy, Damn Small, or one of the other light Linux distros, which run fast on old hardware. You might need to poke around to find a light distro that is reasonably uip to date and currently maintained.

Best and most reliable place to download distros?

Weetabix wrote:Best and most reliable place to download distros?

http://distrowatch.com/