What 5 distros would you suggest for Linux noobs?

[byen]

Hey guys
I know this question might have been asked before..but if you read my post in full..you might understand why I am asking this question again.

Ok.Im a student working as a graduate intern in a pretty big state university in Detroit, USA. After using various distros I settled with Ubuntu and have never looked back. A couple of months ago, when my professor( who i might say is a great supporter of the open source movement inspite of not being a regular user) saw my laptop and asked me more about what I was using and how my experience has been with Linux..I convinced him into installing one of our computers with Ubuntu and he seems to have loved it! Ever since, Ive been trying to talk him into using our resources to give out free cd's to other students who might be able to take advantage of this OS. He seemed reluctant at first but finally he said if can put in my own personal time and burn the cds...i could use the University's resources to burn the Cds with Linux and give em out for free at a summer semester meet we had a couple of weeks ago. So I burned Ubuntu, Ubuntu Live, Knoppix and Suse and believe it or not...it took less than an hour for us to be out of our 100 cds. In the comming days we have received many requests from our students asking us to put the ISo's on our server so that they can download them and burn em from our server. SO coming to the point... We have been granted permission to upload any 5 distros on our university server for our students to download and we are having trouble narrowing down the list. I know there are many sites listing various ditros for new users but to me... Its this community's opinion that matters the most!! So which five distros do you suggest?
Here are the conditions we have:
1.Installation should be easy
2.Most hardware should be compatable/configurable.
3.Must be free
4.Easy Usability.

So...now that you know my question...Please help me do my part for this community. Thank you.

[byen]

oh man...I forgot to enable multiple selections on the poll...can someone ( mod) PLEASE please make this poll do that... sorry.

[AllenGG]

oh man...I forgot to enable multiple selections on the poll...can someone ( mod) PLEASE please make this poll do that... sorry.

Why not just ask for comments and reasons ?
ie: Knoppix, live cd is a good safe, starting point.
Ubuntu's "Live CD" is better, but a little trickier, IBM motto : K.I.S.S.

[aysiu]

Do you realize that Ubuntu will ship you CDs free? You don't need to burn them yourself.

I would recommend:

Mepis - It's a live CD and installer CD in one. It's entirely point-and-click. Its hardware detection is superb.

Blag - For the Fedora/Red Hat crowd (even though it has Synaptic Package Manager, too). This comes with multimedia codecs. It's one CD.

Kubuntu - For the Ubuntu users who prefer KDE.

Damn Small Linux - For those with modest hardware.

[byen]

Do you realize that Ubuntu will ship you CDs free? You don't need to burn them yourself.

yes i know that. But we are trying to uplaod the ISo's on our University servers so that the students (about 2000) could download them off the server ...we have very fast network speeds and since all the computers in the campus are in the same network...download time can be really really small. (less than 40 mins for a 650mb download)

thank you 4 your reply.

[qalimas]

If I were you, I'd probly put up the following:

Ubuntu
Kubuntu
KNOPPIX
SuSE
Fedora Core

Then have a web page with links to all others, such as Mandriva, LAMPPIX, etc

[cowlip]

I can only say Xandros and Ubuntu, and POSSIBLY Mepis, but its UI is confusing sometimes.

Fedora Core and Suse and Mandrake were recommended to me as a Linux newbie---if you are evangelizing, don't do that!! They might be good servers or for advanced users, but as an old newbie, it's not for us

[benplaut]

i'd have to say...

Ubuntu
DSL or Feather (they're so small, you might be able to put on both)
SuSE
Xandros
Knoppix

[matthew]

Ubuntu
Knoppix
Xandros
SuSE

[benplaut]

Ubuntu
Knoppix
Xandros
SuSE

one more...