Per Distrowatch:
Ubuntu, Linux Mint and PCLinuxOS are considered the easiest for new users who want to get productive in Linux as soon as possible without having to master all its complexities. On the other end of the spectrum, Slackware Linux, Arch Linux and FreeBSD are more advanced distributions that require plenty of learning before they can be used effectively. openSUSE, Fedora, Debian GNU/Linux and Mageia can be classified as good "middle-road" distributions. CentOS is an enterprise distribution, suitable for those who prefer stability, reliability and long-term support over cutting-edge features and software.
That being said, I think I opt for one of the "middle of the road" distributions.
Any recommendation?
Middle of Raod.. in my experience, would be any KDE Distro.. not beginners stuff, but very easy to catch up with the differences.. As far as I know, it is the most flexible.. you have complete control of what and where to put things... you can even make it look like WinBlows, if you want.
OpenSUSE is about as middle-of-the-road as it gets. It’s a great distribution for someone who has outgrown Ubuntu but doesn’t want to do absolutely everything on the command line the way you would with Debian and Fedora. Its development cycle is 9 months, which puts it between *Buntu/Fedora (new version every 6 months) and Debian/Centos (new version every several years). Its packages are new, but not so new that they’re bleeding edge. I quite like it.
YaST, the OpenSUSE’s control center, helps you accomplish tasks that a power user might want to do - like setting up a Samba file server - that you’d have to do manually otherwise.
And if you do decide you want more modern packages, there’s a whole selection of third-party repositories in the Open Build Service.
Perhaps the one with the most desktop users.
I personally need stability, since I’m developing stuff, so I go with CentOS.
But the trade off is in things like browser. There are only certain versions of Firefox that CentOS is certified with.
Now with HTML5 rolling out, my Firefox is looking a bit long in the tooth (they crank out new versions like mad).
There are basic plugins, mostly the one you care about is watching videos, and I’m running out of time with my Firefox version. But I can only upgrade to a Firefox version that is certified to work with my CentOS 5.
And checking it all out takes time, so I don’t bother for long stretches (years). Then finally I’ll go and poke around and find out what the latest things are and plan and execute an upgrade.
I can’t be without a browser completely, of course, and I hate to lose functionality that I have. If one just jumps in and starts upgrading willy nilly one can get into a bad position where functionality is lost, since frequently things get broken by new development. Then one has to either go through trying to get back to the old working versions of things, or wait until developers get around to fixing the broken functionality.
CentOS 6 is just coming out, so I’m not too crazy on going to that yet, it’s too new.
All this actually effects every distro. It’s be over a decade since I used suse; I don’t know any details of other distros. But even so I’d hesitate to call any distro - or any operating system, for that matter - “simple”, to the point of just slap it in and go start connecting to the world without exploring the whole installation and knowing what I’ve got running and how it’s configured.
Users who are concerned about fast video performance to the point where they want to actually use the video chip in their computer... need to do some digging to find out if their chip is supported and then verify that it is being used. Otherwise, like me and my Dell, graphics display will all be done in software, i.e., only use the CPU insteading of gaining performance by offloading graphics processing to the video acceleration hardware. Mine works fast enough for me, i.e., I can see videos, I just don’t crank up the resolution because I don’t want my CPU running at more than 20% for extended periods of time. I’m more concerned with making my PC last, i.e., avoiding overheating.
I always start from the “top down”, i.e., I make a list of what I (or the user) wants to actually do. From this I get what applications then are needed, from there keep working down to the details, i.e., lower layers of software, hardware, etc.
Just general browsing, email, office, an off the shelf PC has plenty of power, it’s just the security that is the big concern.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nmap
is a key tool; it supports various platforms.
Regardless of one’s linux distro, there will be services/daemons running; to be secure one must avoid leaving service “doors” open, in addition to practicing safe browsing and safe email use. Safe/paranoid admin practices are far preferable to installing any kind of anti-virus software (which people then typically implicitly trust to handle everything and stop thinking about security).