[teh_hero]

I am looking for a linux distro.
As a second OS, having windows MCE as my main.


But, what i want to do is...
Pretty much program, beginners and maybe more advanced.
Surf web...pretty much the most user friendly, best recommended linux distro.



Can i get it for free, legally?

How would i transfer it, a lightscribe disk?


How big should the HDD be?


Thanks

[macdude425]

http://ubuntu.com

It's free, legal, and burns to a standard writable CD.

6GB is the absolute minimum you need to be "productive" in the sense that you explained. 10GB would be better, and 15-20GB would be ideal.

[jakec]

Kubuntu
http://www.kubuntu.org/

Mandriva
http://frontal2.mandriva.com/en/downloads/mirrors

PCLinuxOS .92
http://ftp.nluug.nl/pub/metalab/dist...glish/preview/
ftp://ftp.nluug.nl/pub/metalab/distr...glish/preview/

Mephis
http://www.mepis.org/

Vector Linux 4.3
http://www.vectorlinux.com/

DSL
http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/

Puppy Linux
http://www.puppylinux.org/user/viewpage.php?page_id=3

Slackware
http://www.slackware.com/

BeaFanatIX
http://bea.cabarel.com/

Elive:
http://www.elivecd.org/

if you are still unsure of the distro, try these Distro choosers:
http://eedok.voidofmind.com/linux/chooser.html
http://www.zegeniestudios.net/ldc/

Yes most Linux distros are free, you can get paid commerical ones like SUSE Xrandros and Lindspire but you are better off getting a free one. the above Distros are free. Linux distros can be burnt onto a srandard CD-R or DVD

Jake

[jeelliso]

I agree with macdude that Ubuntu is an excellent distribution and user-friendly at that. Unfortunantly though, Ubuntu ships with zero development tools. If you choose Ubuntu, which I still suggest, you'll need to install a few packages: build-essential for compilers & libraries, automake and autoconf, and manpages-dev since the build-essential package doesn't come with the manpages for the development libraries.

I've tried over 50 different distros over the years and I keep coming back to Ubuntu.

I also recommend taking at look at Scribes or Geany as your development environment/editor. Both are very lightweight and employ many excellent features.

Good Luck,