Which Linux Distro?

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I am thinking of trying the world of linux via bootcamp, what distro would be the best for a linux newb who has a lot of knowledge about computers and such?
 
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Depends upon what your desires/needs are. If you want a system that just runs from the get go, then Linspire or Freespire would be great. The most popular seems to be Ubuntu. There are other flavors that you have to build from the beginning (installing) but you wind up with a fast system that is not bloated, custom-suited to your needs/desires. Linux gives you lots of choices.
 
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hmm i like the idea of customising it as i install it and then having a fast nonbloated system.

i just want a distro that would be good for learning and such. i would just use it for basic internetting emailing functions. think ubuntu would be good?
 

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hmm i like the idea of customising it as i install it and then having a fast nonbloated system.

i just want a distro that would be good for learning and such. i would just use it for basic internetting emailing functions. think ubuntu would be good?

Ubuntu would be perfect, IMO. That's not to say that Freespire wouldn't be decent too, but Ubuntu has a ton of support forums and has amassed quite a following.

I like Ubuntu because it tends to work great right out of the box, detecting most of the popular hardware out there. Worst case scenario is if you don't like it, you can always just dump your Boot Camp partition and try another.
 
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hmm i like the idea of customising it as i install it and then having a fast nonbloated system.

i just want a distro that would be good for learning and such. i would just use it for basic internetting emailing functions. think ubuntu would be good?

In that case try Gentoo. But buckle your seat belt.
 
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why buckle?

Lets just say the install of this particular distro is not for the faint of heart. But keep in mind - when you finish you have set up THE distro you want, lightening fast and custom designed just for you. It is free so all you have to lose is some of your time if you don't like it.
 

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Ubuntu is a good one. Had moved to Mepis when I bought my Mac. It is an Ubuntu based version with a little extra thrown in. The Mepis founder (Warren) uses a Mac Pro as his primary system. They have a pretty nice forum also, though not nearly the user base of Ubuntu. Think the next version will be moving to Debian based.

Another pretty nice one to start out is PCLinuxOS.

Linux Mint - another Ubuntu based distro, has many more media codecs installed to work with your audio, DVD, etc. out of the box. It can make that side of things a little easier first time out.

You can check out distrowatch.com and read through reviews for maybe the top 5 or 10 distros. That'll help in giving you a good overview for some of the differences between a few of them.

A lot of people like openSUSE also. But have never tried the open version myself.

If you like to do a lot of system tweaking, you may like a KDE distro better, such as Kubuntu or Mepis.
 
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Ubuntu is a good one. Had moved to Mepis when I bought my Mac. It is an Ubuntu based version with a little extra thrown in. The Mepis founder (Warren) uses a Mac Pro as his primary system. They have a pretty nice forum also, though not nearly the user base of Ubuntu. Think the next version will be moving to Debian based.

Another pretty nice one to start out is PCLinuxOS.

Linux Mint - another Ubuntu based distro, has many more media codecs installed to work with your audio, DVD, etc. out of the box. It can make that side of things a little easier first time out.

You can check out distrowatch.com and read through reviews for maybe the top 5 or 10 distros. That'll help in giving you a good overview for some of the differences between a few of them.

A lot of people like openSUSE also. But have never tried the open version myself.

If you like to do a lot of system tweaking, you may like a KDE distro better, such as Kubuntu or Mepis.

All good choices - have tried PCLinux and Mepis and they are both good. SuSE is also a good choice. That was one of the problems with Linux - I spent a lot of my time trying a lot of the various flavors. Some are very good.
 
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so many options...

how will installing them via bootcamp work?
 

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