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[Blade_Train3r]

Even though I have been with PCs most of my life, I've never really had much of an interest in Linux (primarily due to the lack of game support, I admit). But since my sluggish curiousity has been aroused (and Wine is apparently reasonably effective for the most part), I was wondering if anyone here could suggest a decent linux distro for beginners (that still has a decent amount of technical twiddle room)?

The main one I'm considering at the moment is OpenSUSE, but any decent build would work.

Except Ubuntu. Don't ask for a rational reason because I don't have one, but I refuse to go near Ubuntu.

Thanks in advance
Bladetrain3r

PS apologies for all the brackets, I have a strange fascination with them.

[olemars]

OpenSUSE is OK. Trivial to install and set up, and the graphical configuration interface (yast) means you don't have to fiddle with config files if you don't want to (but you can if you do). It has as much technical twiddle room as you'd ever want, and tools to help you out where you don't want to twiddle. As a distro it is as complete as any other and very flexible. Only issue I had was getting the soundcard on my laptop to work 100%.

I'd recommend it for any use.

[HideousBeing]

Well... are you sure you don't want ubuntu? The community is large so you can get help pretty easily and its nice and easy to use.

By the way, never get an ATI card. I'm really regretting it 

[Blade_Train3r]

As I said even I don't know why I dislike Ubuntu , but the Open SUSE community is pretty large as well that I know of. And believe me, I won't go ATI - I've been a loyal nVidiot since my first TNT2 Pro.

Thanks for the recommendation Oledar

Edit: WHOOPS. Olemars. Where'd that typo come from?

[olemars]

OpenSuse has an excellent online wiki with documentation, I've found answers to the few questions I've had in there. As for nVidia, note that since their driver isn't opensource it isn't part of the distribution itself, but there is a one-click install package on the wiki. It was easier to install and get running than on windows...

[Phmcw]

I began on Debian, which is fine if you want to understand how the system work.
I moved on Ubuntu because it's the distro used at the unif, but I'll go back to Debian this summer.

[SolarShado]

My first Linux experience was Red Hat 6... On a machine that could barely run Gnome >_<

More reciently, I've used Xubuntu and DSL. If Win7 wasn't as fast on startup/shutdown, I'd probably be using Xubuntu as my primary OS. Never used plain Ubuntu...

Looking into Arch Linux... I really like the idea of building the system up from a bare-bones base

[HideousBeing]

Looking into Arch Linux... I really like the idea of building the system up from a bare-bones base

It was pretty interesting getting this thing working how I want. Also, I happen to love customizing everything, so it's nice OS for me. Only downside to linux right now is that I got an ati computer with a fairly recent card (no good drivers for it yet).

[SolarShado]

I've been debating on whether to try it out in a VM first or not... I can still use my computer for other stuff, but any tweaking etc. would be lost when/if I actually install it on my HD...

I haven't decided if i really want to dual-boot my laptop... Win7's quite nice, and I'm already thoroughly settled in... add to that the fact that I don't have another computer that's not ancient to tinker with... grrr.... but I love tinkering with Linux....

[HideousBeing]

I've been debating on whether to try it out in a VM first or not... I can still use my computer for other stuff, but any tweaking etc. would be lost when/if I actually install it on my HD...

I haven't decided if i really want to dual-boot my laptop... Win7's quite nice, and I'm already thoroughly settled in... add to that the fact that I don't have another computer that's not ancient to tinker with... grrr.... but I love tinkering with Linux....

Do it in a VM for now. Win7 is really nice even if I don't want to admit it. It also helps in installation because you can access the arch wiki without another computer around.

[Blade_Train3r]

Should've thought of a VM first thing... but then there's the fact that we have an old PC lying around which will allow me to install without any issues.

I shudder at the prospect of adding another option to my boot menu, already got Vista32/Win7 64 dualbooted (certain of my hardware has absolutely no 64-bit support, so unless and until I can afford new... dualboot it is)

Well, Virtualbox is already installed (it's better than VPC at least, imho), so let's get goiiing

[SolarShado]

I shudder at the prospect of adding another option to my boot menu, already got Vista32/Win7 64 dualbooted (certain of my hardware has absolutely no 64-bit support, so unless and until I can afford new... dualboot it is)

Wait, what?

[Blade_Train3r]

I shudder at the prospect of adding another option to my boot menu, already got Vista32/Win7 64 dualbooted (certain of my hardware has absolutely no 64-bit support, so unless and until I can afford new... dualboot it is)

Wait, what?

More specifically my Zyxel Wireless adapter (the G-270S USB one), I'm poor enough I can't afford even a cheapass wireless card atm, and even supposedly generic drivers from Zyxel (and one or two open source attempts) fail dismally with ye olde error 10 (hardware failed to initialise) >,<

If anyone can point me to a functional 64-bit driver for it, I'd greatly appreciate the chance to put paid to Vista

[SolarShado]

OH, 64-bit drivers!

I was reading that to mean that you'd somehow installed an x64 OS on non-x64 hardware >_<

[Blade_Train3r]

Probably possible in a technical manner but I doubt it would be worth the extreme effort involved >,<