Unix question?

[Werevamp999]

I'm sorry to post probably what is such an amateur question to this forum, but I really need help on finding a Unix flavor that I like (that i can also find) and that fits me.
what I'm looking for is something
-Has to be user-friendly
-very friendly to programmers
-does not eat up a lot of RAM or CPU usage (I only have 2.2 ghz and 2 GB RAM, I'm on Vista Basic SP2)
-friendly to people who want to do networking
-friendly on the eyes
-open source

generally, I'm going to be using this to continue to learn and implement programming, new languages and ones already known. So, if you guys know of anything, suggestions would be an amazing help, and links would be A++

[mRmasteRful]

Not a silly question at all. If you were at the lecture we had some time ago we discussed an 'introduction to linux' http://www.hackthissite.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=142&t=6087. Download link there.

Ubuntu is user friendly. Im not sure about easy on the resources though because when I first used it, it had a tendency to stick on me. Myabe its just me.

[Avery17]

Good question. I went with Ubuntu 10.04, it works quite well and is extremely user friendly. It can be resource heavy at times but the computer I use has 512mb or ddr ram and a Pentium 4 hyper threaded processor. Also you can take the bulk of the visual effects off and make it run much faster with ease. Also if I can run it, so can you.

[Vulpine]

-Has to be user-friendly

Ubuntu is generally regarded as being very user-friendly, and a good flavor for beginners. I've heard good things about Arch Linux for beginners, also.

-very friendly to programmers

I'm not so much an authority on this one, but I believe that just about any flavor should be programmer-friendly. Some may come pre-packaged with more emphasis on this than others, though.

-does not eat up a lot of RAM or CPU usage (I only have 2.2 ghz and 2 GB RAM, I'm on Vista Basic SP2)

Just about any flavor is very scalable, but if size and resources are a real big issue, you could take a look at Damn Small Linux (DSL). That would probably be taking it to an extreme, though. You should be more than fine with just about any flavor.

-friendly to people who want to do networking

Social networking? Professional? If you want to be able to get online, you'll be fine with anything.

-friendly on the eyes

You'll probably have to do a little work to make any flavor appear sleek and attractive. There are multiple options when choosing a desktop/windows manager for your Linux flavor, but GNOME and KDE are the most popular. Both are great, with lots of potential for customization, and a marginal learning curve. There are more options for making GNOME look how you want, but KDE has been getting some very sexy face-lifts lately, too. Play around and see what you like.

[Iskalla]

I think the main thing is ensuring the distro runs smoothy enough with your hardware, so experiment with livecd's before you partition or install. Whatever you choose you can tweak to suit you perfectly, you'll be pretty much unrestricted in being able to customize and configure, a lot more freedom than with Windows. Get some magazines that come with LiveCD's, and just have fun. I'd advise you try Ubuntu based on the vast amounts of help and user resources out there and the handy software centre.

[tremor77]

I use CentOS, but that's because i'm ub3r l33t h@x0r yo! I personally like it because I am lazy and YUM is fun and easy. Plus it's fun to use in casual converstation. YUM! That being said, almost every normal person that I know that uses Linux in an every day situation (and that in itself may rule them out as normal) seems to go with Ubuntu for desktops... Fedora is another decent option... I've been told if you plan to go linux on a laptop that OpenSUSE is better.. but have no experience with it so cant personally say.

However, I really need to put it out there for people who are looking to move from an existence of windows usage, to linux.. that maybe your first baby step be: PCLinuxOS http://www.pclinuxos.com/ - To get your feet wet.

I hope the Linux elitists don't stomp me for that

[h9uest]

I agree that this is not a silly question at all.

The first thing occurred to me was Ubuntu.
Like many people above, I'm using Ubuntu as well. But I wouldn't recommend the latest version, i.e. 10.10
It's a Beta. Use 10.04 if you like it.

Also,
Fedora & Redhat are worth a try.

But in fact, I don't think 'user friendly' is something good, if you really want to know about Unix/Linux(in fact, they are not the same thing, but let's ignore the subtle differences here for a moment).
Expose yourself to pure console for some time, and you'll be very happy to find yourself learn a lot.

Hope it helps.

[thetan]

*facepalm*

Linux is the definition of the frankenstein OS, it's a Mr. Potato head, it's a lego set. You can turn any distro into any other distro so who cares. All a distro is is just a specific frankensteined arrangements of components and guess what? none of them are particularly proprietary.

Linux is linux, lets move on in life and never bring up this shitty topic again.

Thanks much in advance - Thetan