current distros for the new user?

[cjb at mrao.cam.ac.uk (Chris Ball)]

>> On Fri, 2 Jun 2006 11:46:56 -0400, "R. Luoma" said:

   > Since the linux distributions seem to change from week to week, I
   > am asking for yet another survey of what would be a good
   > distribution to hand to a new user of linux?

Definitely Ubuntu.  They just made a new release yesterday, with a new
type of installer -- it works as a live CD and gives you an "install 
Ubuntu" desktop icon, so you can check everything's supported before 
you commit.

I'm running Fedora on my laptop, but don't recommend it for beginners
because it has no NTFS support, which is a deal-breaker for anyone
coming from Windows.  It won't even let you resize an NTFS partition in
the installer, which Ubuntu does very easily.  Fedora thinks that NTFS
is patented and not legally distributable.

   > It would be very useful to have a book (again for the new,
   > inexperienced user) for reference.  What is currently on the
   > market?

There's an O'Reilly _Ubuntu Hacks_ being released later this month:

   http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/ubuntuhks/

- Chris.
-- 
Chris Ball   <cjb at mrao.cam.ac.uk>    <http://blog.printf.net/>