I currently use Mageia 4.1 and really like it, I've been moving back and forth between OpenSuse 13.1, Fedora 20 and Mageia 4. All have been excellent Distro's however I'm finding Mageia works best for me now. Unfortunately I don't have the expertise to address your initial post/requirements and the suitability of any particular Distro, just commenting on Mageia.

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I'd make a suggestion that's perhaps an intermediate between ReaperX7's suggestion and the "absolute beginner"/"easy distro" route.

Pick an "easier" distribution and a "harder" one alongside, if you have enough disk space -- which shouldn't be tremendous, you wouldn't be having everything installed in both; and perhaps you could even share some data (like user files/application settings) between distros, even though that's perhaps something "slightly advanced".



My suggestions would be to have either Debian (the stable release) or perhaps some closer Debian-stable pseudo-derivative (like Crunchbang) as the "easier" distro, and Slackware as the "harder" one.

That's based on my personal experience of finding Debian considerably easy (not significantly any "harder" than Ubuntu, at least 2005-6' Ubuntu), and from not having really learned much in a broad sense about linux, with Arch (which I had for a while as a "harder" distro, in parallel), but only temporarily memorizing Arch's package management commands and a few other details. I'm not bashing Arch here, it's just that Slackware has this longstanding reputation of being "the essential" Linux in a way; if you learn to have your way with Slackware, you've learned "Linux"; whereas with other distros you'll more likely learn mostly their particular tools, but your knowledge doesn't generalize as much. You could of course go several steps further and learn more generally about Linux perhaps, with any distro, but it wouldn't be just as likely to happen "automatically", since Slackware is more "vanilla" than most. I should warn though that I'm just echoing what I've heard, and it could perhaps have some degree of hype on it (as often happens on the whole which-is-the-better-cult/distro debate). It still sounds pretty much credible from all I've heard, and I can't say the same from other famous reputations that some distros have.

I don't know if most Debian users would agree with my view of Debian as an "easy" distro, though. Some would recommend Ubuntu for beginners (others would discourage Ubuntu, saying it's even more unstable than the unstable release of Debian, which no one would recommend for beginners), and perhaps some would even recommend something more distant, from the "RPM branch" of the Linux distributions, as more newbie-friendly (there are certainly good options on that "branch", but I just don't know enough to say something more meaningful than you could easily find out with a few web searches, or that others have said already).


I think that perhaps the most important thing to take in consideration when choosing a "newbie" distro isn't so much the proclaimed ease of use, the added scripts and tweaks to make everything easier, but that's still 100% compatible with some long-lived, stable, relatively easy distribution. The "small" distributions tend also to die faster, and you may end up having to move to a new one that would feel totally "alien" if the "easy distribution" is highly modified from a longstanding one. That's why I added "pseudo" to "derivative" on my suggestion (not a pejorative). That's more or less the same spirit/reasoning of the recommendation of getting a "harder" one (or specifically Slackware) from the very start, but might just be considerably easier still.

Well, after the first couple of times, Slackware is not hard - at least to install. I set it up again (after my network problems were solved) in 2 hours. Would have been in less, if my old laptop (in which I installed it) weren't so slow: Pentium M 1.7 GHz, Wlan 802.11g.

The thing is to set up a "use-only" desktop for my wife and guests - especially I have grandchildren less than 5 years old, and there are some very good sites for small children in Finland some of them based on TV programs for younger children using speech instead of text.

Just for some additional background:

There are 5 machines in our family: 2 desktop, 2 laptops and a mini-laptop.

The mini-laptop is mostly used by my wife and it runs Windows 7

The older laptop is more like my personal machine. It's T42 running Slackware 14.1.

An "newer" laptop (that we now use for banking and such) runs Windows Vista, and is located next to the desktop I'm searching OS for, because My printer (Canon Pixma MP 140) works on Vista.

The desktop I'm searching a general purpose OS for used to run Debian 7.2, then 7.3, then 7.4.
Due to the Cups 1.5 printer problems (wrestled with the problems fot almost 1.5 years just to find out it won't work with the CUPS-version it has). So I started looking for other OS'es that might be better suited for the purpose.
Now it's running Mint 17, and the printer still doesn't work.
I tried (was it?) lubuntu or xubuntu 14.04,Live DVD and the printer worked. I don't want to use *buntu, however.
I might go back to Debian (unless some other distro proves to be better) when the new version is published. About half a year from now, I understand.

The one desktop left to describe is a older Phenom machine for my "playground" use. I can try this and that there so that crashing the OS is no catastropy. At the moment it's Vista/Ubuntu 14,04 dual boot, but I'm pretty annoyed with Ubuntu. I can't find the programs - at least not easily, and I can't browse the SW I have available. I could search if I knew which program I'm looking for, but If I'd like to use some more lightweight web browser, which should I search for? I think I'll try Gentoo on it as soon as I have time.

USB install of Debian in less than 1/2 an hour on my slowest machine (a 2001 Acer Extensa with 512 MB RAM and a 1.3 GhZ Celeron). My desktop (i7 4770k 3.5 GhZ 32 GB RAM) is 12 minutes and that is all my customisations and all on both machines.

Depending on what you run and needs. I run UZBL now instead of links2 or Dillo on some of my slower gear.

Supports stock plugins with no hoop jumping, like java and flash. It is a keybinding browser.
It took me about a day to learn it.

Yep, my point was, how do I search in Unity if one of those is available, if I dn't have the name?
I haven't found a way of easy browsing. If I search for, say, "dillo" I probably end up with 20 different photo management programs and 50 small games priced 1 - 5 eur in Ubuntu store.
Very irritating.

Installation times should be irrelevant. With the right distro, properly maintained, one should never have to reinstall. Well, maybe except when I screw up the system myself, but in that case it is just a matter of copying over a backup.

Runnin 'VI$TA' 4 BANKING ???

u nuts 'pal'(thus between quotation marks) !!!

>>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVbf9tOGwno <<<

That's the only way to print the receipt.
(And that's why I'm so cross about the printing problems.)

I'm in the search for Linux (other than *buntu) that can print on my pixma mp140.
Then I could use that for paying the bills.

Anyway, netbanks are somewhat safe in Finland - at least this far they have been.
(except one that is owned by Danske Bank. There have been news about safety problems.)

I do clean installs so installation time is NOT irrelevant.

What if you had your Linux box print to PDF, then print the PDF from the Vista machine?

I would hold off on Slackware, Gentoo, CRUX, and such distributions honestly until you get comfortable with using GNU/Linux. These are distributions aimed more at the fundamental of Linux rather than ease of use. Now I will say that distributions like these have a lot of documentation that can make things easy, but unless you're willing to read the documentation, it's pointless. In fact using Linux is about reading documentation.

I would actually, and this goes against my principles, recommend you start out with an Ubuntu based distribution like Xubuntu. Xfce is an easy desktop to migrate into, and it doesn't overwhelm you.

Once you are used to Xubuntu, and feel confident enough with Linux, then try Slackware. Once you learn Slackware you have all you need, and you can either stay with Slackware, or go advanced and try CRUX, Gentoo, or even LFS. I dare say though, once you go LFS, you never go back... period.

in fact it is! Nobody likes to spend one hour installing ...

Yes, but it also depends on several factors.

Drive speed, file system in use, data transfer rate, and data buffer.