Best Linux Live Distro for a "Newbie"

What would be some good choices for a "Best" Linux Live Distro for a "Newbie"? The person has an ~8 year old Dell which "may" have a hard drive failing. He just wants to surf the web and maybe sometimes print something. He needs a Distro with the firewall already setup (He has no Cable/DSL Router. He only has a direct connection to the modem.).

Thanks in Advance.

 

"The person has an ~8 year old Dell which "may" have a hard drive failing."

Hmmm best chance for old hardware would be something like Puppy Linux, doesn't need a hard drive but would need something like a thumb drive to save changes...(maybe the failing HD could last long enough for that ? )

Puppy Linux is a fast LiveCD that loads into memory, its easy for "Newbie" and the firewall is easy to setup.

 

I plan to give him the following:

1. Puppy Linux 5.25
2, Ubuntu 11.04
3. Pardus 2011.1 Live CD
4. Parted Magic 6.4 (Only to run hard drive diagnostics.)

About a year ago, he briefly used GParted in an older version of Puppy Linux to make his Windows XP C: partition "Active". He was using a different partition manager to resize his C: partition so that he could make a data partition and somehow he changed the newly created data partition to "Active" making Windows XP not boot.

 

if core 2 duo or dual core with 1gb or + ram then LINUX MINT would be best choice

if its p4 .............etc you can go with xubuntu mint xfce or puppy linux

firewall gui is already there just need to click and enable

pclinuxos would be my second choice

 

I also gave him LinuxMint xfce & Xubuntu

 

PCLinuxOS with LXDE?

 

You could try Slitaz. It's the fastest booting livecd I've used and works amazingly well on my 10 year old IBM thinkpad. Puppy also works very well, it doesn't boot as fast as Slitaz but seems to have more features.

 

Definitely Linux Mint 10 LXDE

 

Gentoo.

 

Very funny

From OP:

 

Best way to learn! =p

 

For an 8 yr old pc, Puppy by a long shot As I've said before, "it's the dog's bollocks"

Seriously, it's an awesome distro for old hardware.

 

Do you have practical experience with Gentoo?

 

I put Lubuntu on someones old Dell P4 with 512 MB of RAM, went pretty good. Some slight differences from Ubuntu but nothing major. Once basic system was setup happiness developed and the system ran smooth with Gnome.
I was not a fan of Ubuntu in the past but I like the PPA system for updating and installing, simplifying the process for us beginners.

I suggest Lubuntu, any flavor you want.

 

lxde xfce are pretty good on old hardware

linux mint lxde and xfce is pretty out of box with lof of stuff preinstalled


also there is paper mint OS its good distro created by same guy who make mint lxde

puppy is also great choice for old hardware and ease of use

 

debian stable. It's the lightest around and that thing aint gonna break. It does take a bit of effort to get it up and running with multimedia though. Or try a debian stable based distro with multimedia codecs, flash etc already installed or easily installable. Mepis perhaps?

 

I installed Vector LInux to an old Lenovo laptop with 256MB of RAM. The problem with this computer was the processor, I think it was an AMD K2, but it was not compatible with most of the LInux kernals and would not install.

Puppy version 4.3.1 installed easily with WPA2 wireless and I almost used it but Vector had more features and the wireless setup was graphical with WPA2.

The latest version of Puppy would not install because of the processor issue but Vector's latest version of their Light Live Edition installed and works without any problems. Also, which was important to me, Vector gave a choice of the latest Browsers and the amount of RAM each used.

JIm

 

Slackware...

Actually I'd give PCLinuxOS the nod.

 

I'd say Puppy. Buy a $5 1GB jump drive & they're set.
Failing HDD. We don't need no stinkin' HDD.

 

Zorin OS looks promising. Has anyone installed and used Zorin OS? I briefly tried it out as a LiveCD.

Thanks in Advance.

 

Gentoo got teh lolz

 

If you want to learn debian install debian, if you want to learn red hat install red hat, if you want to learn linux install slackware.

Although slackware is considerably easy compared to gentoo (you essentially compile it from scratch). Best part is it works flawless with you hardware once you do it!

 

How Newbie friendly and stable is CentOS?

 

centOS or SL are very stable for day to day desktop use i dont use eyecandy stuff much on my main desktop so it work perfectly well for me


https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=294257

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=305517

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=304355


please check above ones worth checking and subforms