Whats a good Linux distro to start out with?

[Ex-Cyber]

Just saw an interesting article... Linux shootout: 7 desktop distros compared.

A common reaction at Slashdot was: Why isn't [[favorite distro]] in this list? Of course, with hundreds of distros out there... still, seems a bit weird that they didn't try Slackware.

Slackware probably isn't there for the same reason as any number of favorite distros: because they didn't consider it to be a "desktop distro". It did seem a bit odd to have CentOS in there. Overall, I think the article is a bit pointless; despite being called a "shootout", there's pretty much no actual competition/comparison going on aside from which distro left the reviewer with the best impression. I thought the point of "shootout" articles was to have some kind of objective competition rather than "I like distro X because Y" sort of stuff.

[abydos1000]

I've played around with PPC versions of Linux in the past. My only experience on the Intel side is Ubuntu. I installed it as a virtual machine under VMware. The install was pretty painless and everything worked out of the box.

[Smurph]

install gentoo

[Stryfe]

Per a reference from here, I've tried Xubuntu, and Puppy, on an older PC of mine.

I'd definitely try Puppy. It's awesome, the total package is under 110MB, and it can be run from a 'live' cd/dvd/usb. It runs super fast straight from the system RAM, assuming of course that your PC has 512(+) MB of RAM.