my experience is that periperals, especially wireless networking, was not as good in ubuntu as it was in windows. IN windows my wireless networking hardware worked out of the box. Once I changed to ubuntu it took me quite a few hours to fiddle and get it working. Maybe for you your linux driver support was better then windows, but for me it was the reverse

yea the ubuntu forums are a bit like that, but hell that beats having NO help at all. and there are many newbie guides amd the wiki is quite good.

Now would be a good time to try out the new Fedora with Meego
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/MeeGo_1.0

I'd also advise against Ubuntu, it's a great OS, it really is, but imo it doesn't have that Linuxy feel anymore; it reminds me too much of Windows.

For a beginner I'd go for Fedora, and then move onto Arch Linux/Gentoo to understand the inner workings of Linux.

Ubuntu's good. I made the switch to Ubuntu 9.10 about a year ago. It took me a few weeks to make it decent enough to use as my main OS - For example, I like sharp aliased "xp" fonts - and finding proper replacements for my apps took a bit.

Personally, I like the KDE desktop - it's more 'windows' like than even windows is, and combines with desktop compositing via Compiz Fusion... It's far more usable than xp or 7 is.
(I can't live without my 4 virtual desktops mapped to F9-F12).

I have become a fan of the command-line, and often have a terminal open to do something or other. Shell scripts are also a major advantage - I have pair of them doing on-the-fly OCing /UCing of my video card, and I even have it setup to auto-oc when I launch TF2 via Wine.

These days, I decided to go with Debian Squeeze. It works about the same, but was a lot harder to setup - I may end up going back to ubuntu at some point.

I suggest Ubuntu/kubuntu to anyone - it's easier to switch to than others, and yet allows all the freedom of the linux world.

Hardly. If anything it's "like windows" in the sense that there's very little fiddling with config files to get things working and do "superuser" things. You aren't required to drop to the console to do many things.

Ubuntu is what has made me a heavy Linux user, and is the primary reason so many systems on my current project at work run Linux. Not simply because it is easier, but because the customization time is so much shorter as I can customize what I need instead of customizing things so they work like I expect.

I suppose it depends on your goals, but Fedora (rather, Redhat before Fedora) and Gentoo were two of the primary causes of me keeping Linux at arms length for a long time. There's nothing more you can really get out of Linux in Fedora or Gentoo than you can out of Ubuntu, except maybe for some distribution specific stuff.

My suggestion would be first to install openshell on your N900, and then to download putty, which is a ssh-terminal program for Windows, and then login to 'user' at your n900.

Voila a linux commandline.

Paai

That's the daftest reason I've heard for not recommending Ubuntu.

As a UNIX/Linux SysAdmin for far too many years, I'd heartily recommend Ubuntu to newcomers and veterans alike.

But of course, that's just my opinion

no one ask any questions... fine

how much time do you have spare in the first 7-14 days?

as I would recommend to install your system from scratch and get rid of windows in the first place (can be reinstalled at a later point but the fact that you have to reinstall overrates your own laziness)

I recommend ubuntu as well but as jd said it is a bad joice for learning your way around GNU/linux. Depending on the time you want to spend: not much - ubuntu,xubuntu; a little - debian with kde; some - debian testing with xfce; some more - debian testing with fvwm; no evenings - archlinux; not even enough sleep - slackware;

If you need help on deciding, the scale of time you need to spend to learning experience is quadratic. For ubuntu and debian you need to know the fact that after knowing them you know the debian-way of GNU and this knowledge will help you through most problems on other distributions as long as they follow some kind of a standard behavior. For Arch and Slack you will need to spend the most time behind your monitor, what does not mean that you don't have a running system within hours but you are forced to learn your way around on a CLI (command-line-interface) within GNU/linux stuctures.

A good start off is to use a pendrivelinux with possibility to persistent working (you don't have with cds without writing to your harddrive). There you are able to startup non-persistent if you are on a killing-spree of tryout and learning by doing, once you know how something works you reboot the pendrivelinux persistent and make the changes you just learned from screwing your non-persistent system several times (that does not count for boot sequences as you cannot view them changes happen on non-persistent mode).

I hope that helped.

For all other things, try to find someone who already knows his/her way around just in case you cannot even boot your system anymore.

PS don't even think about using gentoo, the only thing you will learn in the first 3 days is how many code your pc is able to compile...

If you're looking to simply explore linux then just try a LiveCD. And if you run it under a virtual environment (vmware/virtualbox) you don't even need to waste time/CDs burning the CD - just download the ISO and boot from it.

Keep an eye on http://distrowatch.com/
Read their weekly digests http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=current it often contains quick reviews of new distros so you can get an idea of what each distro is about.

I'd say Fedora Linux or Ubuntu Linux.

Fedora is more secure due to its RPM and SELinux, but Ubuntu is not so bad either although worse.

SELinux can be taken in use in Ubuntu also, but it is not supported and probably do not work very well in Ubuntu. Fedora used to have lots of problems with SELinux and there has been a long learning-curve, but it is mostly done now and benefits of SELinux are obvious.

Functionality otherwise in both are about the same.

If you plan to use Meego in the future, then RPM package system you would want to get more familiar with and therefore Fedora.

There is also Live -DVD / -CD / -USB-stick option for Fedora.