On Apr 16, 2011 11:18 AM, <foldingstock@theowned.org> wrote:
>
> > Like I said, "A Lot has changed in 12 years". Debian is more friendly
> > today than yesterday as are most distros, but there are others that are
> > friendlier, a lot friendlier.
> >
> > So, I stand by my initial statement that Debian is not suitable for the
> > Linux firsttimer. I would never recommend it to a noobie. With Debian,
> > you need to know, at least somewhat, what you're doing.
> >
> > B
> >
>
> I think if someone is capable of reading and comprehending the excellent
> documentation available, there should be no problem using Debian. This is
> how many people have learned.
>
The debian documentation is among the best (along with gentoo and FreeBSD). That said, when I want to get something done this isn't the first place I look - I google and what I find there. I don't suppose I could consider myself 'new' anymore and it did take me a year to figure out how to find things on the net.
I think that any distro that doesn't do quirky things is good for beginners (ie, sles having aliases and definitions for everything is just stupid). If a distro keeps its etc pretty standard, puts things in the right place in the directory tree, and has a good user base, it should be good to learn on. (the first and second reason are why I hate mandrake)
There is also the issue of how you use linux. If you want a free OS that just works, you can install debian or ubuntu (or maybe fedora - idk) and most things should pretty much work. You can use this environment and that's great. However I don't think you really learn linux like this.
Otoh, you can run mac or windows and just access linux through putty or terminal.app and get tons of experience.
In the end, I suppose it just depends what you want to get out of it.