What is the best linux distro?

it is difficult or rather impossible to define rpecisely the best linux distro i think in many cases depends from your needs and purposes from a system operator... I think ubuntu is one of the most friendly really easy to use have ood services linked to this distro as cloud,softwares search which are not enabled on the os and so on...fedora and opensuse they can be a good option as well...May be for business i found redhat really useful...

Hey now that you've said it that you are new to linux, i would strongly recommend you Ubuntu(stable version of course) try Ubuntu 10.04, but i would suggest you go for Ubuntu 9.10 as it has less bugs. As a newbie you can also try out Kubuntu and Linux Mint. Don't even think of venturing near fedora, archlinux, mandriva and the likes unless you gain considerable knowledge and are comfortable using command line. Coming to the literal meaning of your discussion, "what is the best linux distro?" i too like most other 'penguins'(linux users)would say that there's nothing like a best distro for linux, it all depends upon one's comfort level, proficiency and ease of use. hope it helps. regards. NC

Of course Ubuntu has come out a long way due to enthusiasm of Mark shuttleworth its official sponsor. The problem he saw was that Microsoft had become a monopoly in the market, which would be eventually be dangerous for the customers. Hence came out an easy to use ubuntu with a strong help and support forum. The problem in Ubuntu is supposed to follow the free software philosophy. After sometime came out linux Mint to which customer satisfaction was the only priority. So they took the most user friendly Linux OS which is Ubuntu and tweaked it such that new users never had to forcefully use the command line. And all the proprietary codecs and software were added in order to meet the needs of the user and give them an out of the box experience. But now for first time Linux Mint is based on debian's unstable version which is faster but buggier as well and is less user friendly. The other main thing is hardware compatibility, Ubuntu is compatible with almost any hardware.

i prefer ubundu.its easy to use.now the latest version of ubundu ,ubundu-ultimate edition has released.its compatable to windows7 in graphics and other utilities.good luck.

I tried installing redhat, mandrake, suse, slackware, debian, and ubuntu on my desktop computer. I stayed on ubuntu (kubuntu) and used it until now because for its user friendly for my level (user). I recommend to try ubuntu.

hi to this discussion and all we cannot say this distro is best that distro is bad because in linux nearly more than 60+ distrubutions are available it may depends of your requirements suppose u r running office in a linux environment it may be depend on server class environment at that point of view redhat linux is best u may working in home fedora is best becuase fedora having 4250 + packages inbuilt no need to go for extra softwares and u may running on clustering linux the distro can may vary the easy linux for beginners ubuntu is best becuase they will give free live cd to encourage newbies

Yes you can start with Ubuntu to see what is like... I think you ask for best distro for desktop OS. Because it's different from lets say server OS. I like Debian and it can be customized as you want. Well Ubuntu is based on Debian so i like it too. Thumbs up for Ubuntu!