TheWatchWorks

My personal opinions on why I say that Linux Mint 6 XFCE CE is my favorite:

1) It uses XFCE desktop environment which is lighter and faster than Gnome and KDE.

2) In terms of "completeness", XFCE is more complete than the lighter LXDE desktop environment (my second favorite DE).

3) Linux Mint 6 XFCE CE comes with a lot of "out-of-the-box" extras which makes it much much much easier for newbies to enjoy Linux instead of having to download packages just to get things going. Please note that another "out-of-the-box" Linux would be Mandriva One 2009 which also comes with a lot of extras that you will not find in other distros.

4) The Linux Mint Forum Community is friendly, helpful and concerned for you. They want you to have the best Linux experience and will go out of their way to help you out as they have helped me when I was a newbie. Other great Linux Forums that are very helpful would be the forums of Ubuntu and Mandriva. I tried Debian in the past but I found the community to be too techie... they expected you to know everything... not newbie-friendly at all.

5) Wifi - wicd is simply the best for wifi in my opinion. Gnome's Network Manager had some inconsistent wifi performance (at least for me) as compared to wicd. Besides, when using Ubuntu, a "key-ring password" would always be asked if you had your own secure network. I found this annoying but I believe that there is a work-around for that. Would a newbie want to trouble themselves with a work-around or would they want everything to be user-friendly? The only problem with wicd is that the signal-strength bar is not very legible unlike that of Gnome's Network Manager. Wicd should come-up with a more legible signal-strength indicator or bar. And I believe that the none-Gnome-dependent distros should use wicd instead of network manager. Xubuntu for one should use wicd.

6) Linux Mint 6 XFCE CE comes with OpenOffice. The other light distros come with the Abiword wordprocessor & Gnumeric spreadsheet program. Abiword and Gnumeric have a lot less features than OpenOffice. When I used Crunchbang which is a very nice and fast distro, I simply removed Abiword and installed OpenOffice.

7) Linux Mint updates - makes sure that you have the latest updates to keep your system secure and brand-new.

I am biased towards Debian or Ubuntu-based distros simply because I am used to synaptic, sudo apt-get and aptitude. Prior to using Linux Mint XFCE, I was using Crunchbang... I love it but I found it to be a bit "techie" and not-so newbie-friendly. I mean... openbox is not really newbie-friendly and then to make things a bit nicer... configuring your desktop would be difficult for newbies too... like conky etc. The nice thing about Crunchbang Linux is that it too came with a lot of goodies out-of-the-box and the Crunchbang Community is very helpful and this is the main reason as to why Crunchbang is moving-up the Distrowatch charts. Crunchbang is actually the distro to watch.

I did a Debian LXDE installation in the past using a wired-connection and installed the Intel drivers plus wicd... it was the perfect speed-racing Linux desktop for me but LXDE was not as complete as XFCE.

I have also tried Debian with Fluxbox and IceWM and found them too light and not user-friendly or intuitive. But it is not the fault of Fluxbox and IceWM... their objectives are really to keep it light and simple... and so, completeness and intuitiveness may come in secondary. They are targetted for lower-spec machines and Ubuntu has a very good tutorial for those low-spec or Low Memory System machines.

Finally, if a newbie would ask me what distros I would recommend to him or her... i would first ask... what is your system or machine specs? If his or her specs can satisfy the requirements of user-friendly distros, I would recommend:

1) Linux Mint XFCE CE (or Linux Mint Gnome)

2) Mandriva One Gnome - includes the best in hardware detection and support

3) Ubuntu - a consistent favorite. if you have a problem... just visit their forum

If the newbie is willing to learn a bit and does not mind some configurations, I would recommend:

1) Crunchbang - newbies might get shocked by the all-black and bare desktop at first

2) Dreamlinux - nicest eye-candy and Mac-like desktop

3) OpenSuse - one of the Linux cornerstones and has a very large following

4) Fedora - another favorite but not so out-of-the-box.

5) Kubuntu - KDE is somehow a bit more confusing than Gnome

6) Xubuntu - not the fastest & most complete XFCE out there

If the newbie has only a bare-bones low-spec machine... these little guys would be helpful

1) AntiX - very nice and fast. the developer did a very good job to make it as complete and light as possible.

2) Crunchbang - not as light as AntiX but not as heavy as Ubuntu

3) TinyMe - tries to be as light as possible and will be based on Unity Linux.
4) Puppy Linux - a top-favorite but not as complete as the heavier AntiX and Crunchbang
5) Damn Small Linux - another old-time light-weight favorite.
6) Tiny Core Linux - a good review can be found here

Now if the newbie is willing to take some time to learn and go thru some hoops, loops and obstacles...

1) Debian - has the largest compilation of software packages. a bit slow on release schedule and does not always have the latest and greatest system but is number one in pure stability. So far, the LiveCD's of Debian cannot be installed and that is one drawback.

2) Arch linux - really fast and light but needs a lot of learning and hanging-out in the forums. Highly-configurable too.

Good luck with your Linux adventure. The best Linux Distro or Flavor for you would be a matter of your personal taste. We are lucky to have sooo many flavors to choose from. And the best part is... they are all FREE!

My last tip would be... look for a distro that has a LiveCD that is installable.