Distro choice

Posted Sep 1, 2005 8:18 UTC (Thu) by odie (guest, #738)
Parent article: Five mistakes GNU/Linux neophytes make (Linux.com)

There is of course also the aspect of defining a newbie. When I was new to Linux some ten years ago I had had previous experience of MS-DOS, SunOS4 (BSD), and several odd little systems like Sharp's EOS and FDOS. When I was looking for an OS for my brand new PC I first got Windows 95, which was supposedly the top of the line home OS at the time. I found it extremely difficult, so I tried Red Hat, which was equally difficult. I then found Slackware (3.3) and was instantly at home. To me it was the by far most intuitive and newbie-friendly system imaginable. I was quickly more proficient with Slackware than with the systems I had been using before.

I might have been an extreme case, but I still think it is an oversimplification to assume that all newbies need eye candy and well hidden internals. Some prefer transparency and understandability.