What 5 distros would you suggest for Linux noobs?

[poofyhairguy]

SUSE or Linspire if they are setting it up themselves.

Ubuntu if you will set it up for them.

[npaladin2000]

Ubuntu, Xandros, Blag, Fedora, Debian

I tend to believe in LiveCDs for demoing Linux and as a learning tool, but for daily use it should be installed.

Ubuntu has (obviously) massive community support, as does Fedora and Debian (Them even more than Ubuntu, sorry). Blag is a simple 1-CD Fedora install that even gets MP3s going by default, and comes with APT/Synaptic so it's easy to add other stuff. Xandros is a commercial distro with actual commercial support, which some users may need.

[Sushi]

Not in any particular order:

- Knoppix: To give the new user a way to try out Linux without hosing his existing system. If he likes what he sees, he's ready to move on.

- SUSE: A very slick distribution with excellent documentation. Solid German engineering

- (K)Ubuntu: Poster-child of Linux on the desktop. Good community and a solid roadmap. Seems to have lots of momentum behind it.

- Gentoo: For those who really want to know how Linux works, without being as extreme as Linux From Scratch. Excellent community (propably the best among the distros) and great documentation.

- No need for fifth choice. Those four offer just about everything the user could want.

[Terracotta]

Well maybe you can make two distros of ubuntu and kubuntu? But I agree on the above: five different flavors (with a rating going from easy to very difficult).

Knoppix (no need to install)
Mepis (easiest install I've ever seen, as well as no need to install, so maybe a bit redundant with knoppix)
Kubuntu (just works, KDE)
Ubuntu (just works, Gnome)
Gentoo (hard to install)

Or instead of gentoo go all debian, and put debian as last, or you could flip knoppix or mepis out of it and put gentoo back.

Edit: what a surprice, ubuntu is the most favored one on the ubuntufora . I hope you've tried other fora as well? to get a broader vision.

[craigevil]

Kanotix livecd and installs a working debian unstable system
PCLinuxOS livecd plus it can be installed very easily
Ubuntu
MEPIS
SUSE

Personally I started playing around with LiveCds like Knoppix , PCLinuxOS and a couple others. Decided it wasn't that hard. Installed PCLinuxOS had a few problems. Tried Xandros had issues with Firefox extensions.Then using Kanotix I installed Debian Sid in Novenmber 2004. Took about a month to actually figure out how to do everything. In January 2005 windows went bye bye.

Finally in July 2005 received my Ubuntu disks. Installed on my Dell C600 laptop along with the unofficial Add-on cd. Not a big fan of Gnome so I installed Xfce along with Rox-filer.

[KingBahamut]

Easy.

In this order now.

Xandros
Fedora
Suse
Slackware
Ubuntu

Heres why......

Xandros is a Transitional Distro. Most Windows users that I know that have used it feel more comfortable with it than any other.

Fedora and Suse both develop an hinged knowledge on RPMs, GUI based configuration, and advanced server concepts aka VPN, Tunneling, Sendmail/PostFix/Exim, and other such things.

Slackware would go next in line. Slackware forces the user to use the CLI and understand the configuration aspect of a Linux box. Its a great start for an admin thats starting out.

Then you pick up Ubuntu, you have all the tools in front of you, youve used all the others, and now you should be able to setup and configure a system to your liking from here.

[murkin]

Xandros is super easy to get used to (coming from windows) however the free / open circulation version limits cd burning to 4x and does not include support for dvd burning. It's an extremely easy distro to start with though. I loved it when I used it. Too bad the limitation-free versions are $50 and up.

Ubuntu...for obvious reasons of stability, support via forums and ubuntuguide.org, debian repositories by way of apt-get or synaptic, etc. Ubuntu does require a good amount of tweaking to get everything going just right. Particularly as far as multimedia is concerned. It is by no means difficult of course, and probably beneficial for tech students to do.

PCLinuxOS .91 - This one's a Mandriva-based live CD with option to install. It's the latest distro I've been messing with. Everything seems to work out of the box, especially multimedia. I had an issue during installation where unless the partition was formatted in reiserfs, the newly installed OS would not boot, but I think this is a fluke. Otherwise, installation was smooth (graphical installer). I was only able to find one mention of this error on their forums. Anyway, streaming media works (no tweaking required). All the hardware on my 3 year old laptop was detected. The forums and wiki proved helpful, though not as robust as here. And it's easy on the eyes (great boot splash screen, nice icons, wallpaper, etc.)

CentOS 4 - I know this is not meant to be a newbie distro but for your use (computer science students) this one might be a great idea. It is a clone of RedHat Enterprise Linux with all RedHat references stripped out. There is a DVD iso available, or optional cd-rom iso's, with TONS of programs ready to install. I'm pretty sure you can even use it to install a clone of RedHat Application Server. This would be great for the students to gain experience with seeing as how widespread RedHat usage is in the corporate world. The guys maintaining this distro do a great job. As a slimmed down option, there's always Fedora Core!

Damn Small Linux is a great distro, particularly for older computers. It's very fast and stable and the .iso is only about 50mb.

I know this is number 6, but...Mepis was another distro I found easy to use, but it didn't feel as comfortable to me as Ubuntu so I didn't use it all that much... I guess it might be a toss-up between Mepis and PCLinuxOS.

Good luck with your search!!

[ssck]

being a newbie and ubuntu being the only distro i have tried so far .... i'll definitely recommend it

[KiwiNZ]

Here is what I would suggest

Suse 9.3
Mandriva
Ubuntu (depending onhardware)
Xandros
Lycoris

I hate the term "noob" why can't we use "new user" or "beginner"

[welsh_spud]

The trick is variety. I suggest the following:

Puppy Linux - Its (in my opinion) way better than DSL, its faster and has more n00b orientated programs.

Knoppix - The defacto LiveCD

Ubuntu - Perfect desktop OS for n00bs

The OpenCD - For those who don't want to try linux, but would like to try some open software

Kubuntu - Same as Ubuntu, but using the KDE desktop