Difference between all of the Linux's?

[gumbob3]

Could someone please explain to me the difference between the Linux OS's? Which is the best for a basic home OS? Also, why do people say it is hard to learn how to use Linux? Took the tour and it seems simple... Thanks!! -Linux Noob

 

[Rookie_MIB]

Oh wow. Well, to be simple enough, there are a huge variety of 'nix distros out there, and they are designed a variety of ways. Generally, there are user friendly variants, and then distributions tweaked for more specific tasks. Here's a breakdown of the distros:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux_distributions

That being said, I'm very familiar with Fedora and CentOS (both based on Red Hat Linux/ RHEL) and they're very solid distributions. Ubuntu is also very polished.

 

[dmroeder]

"The best" is purely opinion, so I won't say mine is "the best", just my opinion: I prefer Linux Mint KDE edition.

People that say Linux is hard to learn almost certainly haven't used it. Or didn't give it much of a shot. As you've found, it's not all that hard. My ~60 year old parents use it, my 5 and 8 year old kids use it. I have a couple of friends that are now using it and they have no real problems. I think if you go into it with no preconceived notions then you'll be fine.

What I suggest you do is install virtualbox on your current machine, then install it in a virtual machine to try it out. Or you could download something like Linux Mint or Ubuntu, but it to a disk and run it live. This will allow you to try it out before installing it. It's not quite as fast as running it for real, or in a VM but it will let you quickly test it.