| IMHO, usually each distro has got diferent issues that makes people love / hate it.
I think Mandrake is the easiest distro to starting to work if you know nothing about linux. The install is kind of any windows install (OK, OK, Go ahead, OK, Yes, OK ....) and most of the config tools have a GUI so you don't have to deal a lot with console if you don't like to. But I've heard many people say "It's completely like windows, so why should i move on?"
Debian (another distro) is completly opposite: It's more oriented towards developers and more stable / robust systems, but (imho again) you pay all your sins when installing and configuring it. I don't recommend it for starters.
Redhat is a mix of both: It's quite easy to install, with guis for some tools, but to configure the whole of it you have to use the command-line
Those are the 3 I know, but there are many more (look here
About the RPM or DEB packages, now that I've worked for some time (~2,5 years) with both of them, I prefer .DEB (like debian), but at home I'm still working with RedHat and the .RPM system
Hope it helped |
