<p>well you can make any distro look like windows/mac, it just seems like kde functions more like mac than gnome does...or atleast to me</p>
<p>i prefer kde........ but beryl is REAL COOL (not just the cube, but the windows effects). they run on a 4 year old laptop better than vista does on ANY machine!</p>
<p>I love fedora, it's not as easy to use as ubuntu, but RedHat's stuff in general is awesome.</p>
<p>yep true dat^^^</p>
<p>I'm going to agree with the above posts that Fedora and Ubuntu/Kubuntu are my favorites. Ubuntu is easier to use, but I prefer Fedora because I've used it longer. Download a bunch of ISOs for different live disks and run them before you make a decision.</p>
<p>Gentoo >>> ALL!</p>
<p>But seriously, Gentoo is nice for learning, especially once you've gotten ubuntu out of the way.</p>
<p>The thing I don't like about redhat is the RPM. They're fun and easy until you screw up your database, then you pretty much cant do anything. (I started with mandrake and had to format over 10 times caused my rpmdb screwed me over</p>
<p>ubuntu!
It's one of the most popular, so you'll have other users to ask questions/rely on.
It's easy to use unless you have AMD</p>
<p>ubuntu. definitely.</p>
<p>Kubuntu all the way - any of the Ubuntu's are great, but Ubuntu, which uses GNOME, feels Mac-like, whereas KDE is similar to Windows, and as a former Windows user, I found it much easier to use.</p>
<p>Kubuntu. You might think that you 'learn more' with gentoo, but after you've spent 10 hours fixing a goddamn java library dependency caused by a portage bug instead of doing homework, you'll quickly change your mind.</p>
<p>Backtrack! Yeah, don't even try it. That is my personal advice. Ubuntu is the easiest for those who wish to try Linux and you can go from there. If your computer will run Ubuntu, it will run nearly anything that is just as current or newer. Good luck. Download a few distros and try them out and see what you like.</p>
<p>You know, if none of these work out for you, you could always make your own: linuxfromscratch.org has this awesome guide/software to make your own distro, and make it specifically for security/power user/multimedia system/gaming/anything, really. Check it out, pretty cool…</p>