I should really get to revising this. To be honest, I haven't used Ubuntu since version 4 (and 5 in beta). I also haven't been keeping up with the other distributions in its class (the sort of "noob friendly" type), such as Mandriva and SuSE. I've been a Gentoo user for over a year now. Additionally, I don't think I'd really recommend a "noob friendly" type distribution anymore in the first place. I think diving in all the way with Slackware, Debian, or even Gentoo is probably a better idea in the long run. In short, I no longer fully back all of the opinions/recommendations stated below.
First recomendation:
Ubuntu Linux
This Debian-based distribution is excellent for the new user, yet something a more advanced Linux user would be happy with. Its installation is extremely simple, and it's put together with an approach that keeps things simple (not bloated), yet functional. Excellent hardware detection. The wonderful APT system of Debian, with a Synaptic for those who don't want to use the command line to download and install their software. It's a relatively new distro, but is extremely fast-growing, and the community is huge. The Wiki on the site is helpful.
Not only all that, but they'll actually send you
FREE CDs with cover art and all, shipped free of all charges, without jumping through any hoops or filling out anything but a mailing address and making a username/password. I know...not so significant in making a good distro, but it's a nice touch.
Second recommendation:
Gentoo Linux
This is a distribution with the idea that the user chooses everything. It's centered around Portage, which is essentially the package management tool. People who want to push their computer to every possible performance limit ("ricers") supposedly use Gentoo because everything Portage doesn't download prebuilt binaries like most distributions, it downloads the source and compiles it with specific options set by the user, which results in a more efficient and often smaller binary, since you can choose not to compile support you don't need. "Ricers" are also the reason
Gentoo users get made fun of a lot. The effectiveness of such "optimization" is arguable. The installation is a lot more tedious than most distros (well, maybe not linuxfromscratch.org
), since you essentially have to download and compile the major components of the system yourself, and configure everything yourself, choose all hardware yourself, etc. At the beginning, you have a very basic system with nothing installed, but the end result once everything is completely set up is a system totally tailored specifically to your needs. The other thing, is that for a new Linux user with a lot of time on their hands (as in several days, not to mention time for leaving the system compiling things like KDE/GNOME overnight which take ridiculous amounts of time), can learn a LOT about Linux and become more familiar with how to do things, and how to troubleshoot, by going through the installation. The detailed Gentoo Handbook on the website can teach a lot, as can solving the issues that are sure to come up when going through the installation.
I currently use Gentoo, but if I had to do it over again, I'd probably be lazy and go Ubuntu, because of how long Gentoo takes to get installed, despite how awesome it is once it's done. Despite slowness of compiling and all, I really love Portage.
