Best newbie linux distro

[Asraniel]

Hi there.
I'm searching a linux distro for my girlfriend.
She had feisty, gutsy and now hardy, but they all had the same bug with her tv card that makes the computer hard lock once a day (kernel panic) and now with gutsy, new bugs have been added, for example, all videos a painted blue sometimes (intel graphics card) and only a reboot (or 2-3 reboots) can fix this.

So, i need a user friendly, NOT buggy linux distribution that uses KDE.
I was thinking about open suse, perhaps fedora. Is there another good linux distribution around?

[Paqman]

Try PCLinuxOS. It's a Mandriva-based distro that uses KDE (although you can get it in Gnome)

The main flaw i'd say it has is that it has way too many little knicknacks installed by default, and the menus don't hint at what they're all for. Uninstall half the rubbish on it and rename things to be more intuitive (ie: "K3B disc burner" instead of just "K3B")

It's main strength is that it has a unified control panel with a lot of useful admin tools, so she shouldn't ever have to drop to a command line and hack config files.

I've been using it for a while myself due to hardware probs with Ubuntu/Fedora/Suse/whatever. It's about the only distro that likes my machine.

[SuperSon!c]

Hi there.
I'm searching a linux distro for my girlfriend.
She had feisty, gutsy and now hardy, but they all had the same bug with her tv card that makes the computer hard lock once a day (kernel panic) and now with gutsy, new bugs have been added, for example, all videos a painted blue sometimes (intel graphics card) and only a reboot (or 2-3 reboots) can fix this.

So, i need a user friendly, NOT buggy linux distribution that uses KDE.
I was thinking about open suse, perhaps fedora. Is there another good linux distribution around?

that's what live cd's are for...try opensuse. fedora is definitely not for noobs.

[Zimmer]

Mepis for KDE

[swoll1980]

Ubuntu

[cardinals_fan]

Zenwalk or DesktopBSD.

[adamklempner]

Try PCLinuxOS. It's a Mandriva-based distro that uses KDE (although you can get it in Gnome)

The main flaw i'd say it has is that it has way too many little knicknacks installed by default, and the menus don't hint at what they're all for. Uninstall half the rubbish on it and rename things to be more intuitive (ie: "K3B disc burner" instead of just "K3B")

It's main strength is that it has a unified control panel with a lot of useful admin tools, so she shouldn't ever have to drop to a command line and hack config files.

I've been using it for a while myself due to hardware probs with Ubuntu/Fedora/Suse/whatever. It's about the only distro that likes my machine.

Aside from [K]ubuntu, I second PCLinuxOS. If you are worried about all of the little programs that come installed with the full PCLOS, give PCLOS minime 2008 a try. That is the bare OS + KDE and very little else. But I would only recommend that for someone who really knows all of the little trinkets that they need.

PCLOS has been the least buggy of the desktop KDE distros that I have used in the last couple years. The biggest issue for me is that I don't like the K-menu arrangement of programs/categories. But that is easy enough to sort out on your own in just a few minutes.

It works fine with my Hauppauge TV tuner, BTW. And being a rolling update OS, it is nice that I don't have to reinstall the whole thing every six months when a new version comes out.

Check it out, I think you might be happy with it :)

[SunnyRabbiera]

Mepis is pretty good, and even if it has KDE its really solid.
Or if you dont like KDE try Linux mint, its based on ubuntu but has a lot of bugfixes in it.
Mandriva is also newbie friendly that also uses a very solid KDE

[miwaypet]

Linux Mint!

[quanumphaze]

For that blue video problem I recommend you try this (http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-432085.html).

I think you can also play around with xrandr to set the TV the default output if you want to keep using xv for video.

[Incense]

OpenSUSE. You do need a little more work to set it up, but it's very solid and stable in my experience. Plus the next release does away with the slow package manager (finally).

[billgoldberg]

Those problems your GF are having doesn't sound like something that can't be fixed.

Did you try to ask about it in the appropriate forum?