I am wondering what Distro is like XP, just works out of the box, because sometimes time is short, and sometimes I have time to play and learn more. I would like some to replace windows, something I can use my mp3player with, usb external enclosure (harddrive), my pc is a laptop at the moment, Amd Athlon XP-M 2800+,

I've tried plenty, but still trying them and stuff .

Thanks

suse, mandrake, fedora core 3...are all newbie friendly, and all come with KDE, which is very windows like in many ways...

the one you are are looking for is Xandros

I dont think so, its so limited!!! please

Xandros?
compared to xp?????

I thought it was limited too when I first set it up. I thought so for two weeks. Linux goes to tinsel town I thought. But you know, the more I use it the more I like it. Its easy to customise with just the apps I want but it remains featherwight and fast - especially compared to the overweight suse 9.2s I've got on other machines. In standard kit it takes only gb of hard disk. I can flick between different logins, watch video clips, I can do anything I want .. fast.
I think of Xandros as my racing car.
No, its much more than a pretty face.

Santa Fe is a new Debian based distro. It was designed to have a look and feel similar to Windows. It's a live CD so you can test it out before installing. http://www.santafelinux.com/

Stay away from Xandros,...
You have to pay to get anything of value.

SuSE and Mandrake would be my first recommendations. Both are attractive and easy for new users to learn. Plus, both are full-featured distributions (the "Professional" versions not the "Personal" ones), and have all the bells and whistles you need once you get going in Linux.

Maybe a newb question, but don't you pay for updates from Suse and Mandrake? Or is it just that releases are scheduled and conform to CD releases or something?

the update in Mandrake always worked for me, and you can always set up some URPMI sources (it's like apt-get...sorta) to get updates.

Starting a flame or what ?

Think you have missed the entire point of open source..............

Obviously never even seen FreeBSD as well.

I think he meant that with Xandors you have to pay to use their package manager to it's full extent.

that certainly sounds like winblows (e_X_treem P_rogramming)

Most of this is misinformation. There is a pay-for-it version of Xandros that is comparable to XP (that you also pay for). It comes with lots of glossies and support. (You have to pay for support with all the distros).
If you dont want to pay for anything you can download the open circulation version. What you dont get with open circulation are the glossies, the support, the Xandros CD/DVD burner, the Xandros firewall.
But, maintenance/updates for the open circulation version is free. The package builder is free. Using the package builder or apt-get its 5 minutes to install a free firewall and k3b. You have a complete graphical desktop that also does things others dont (plays videos for example, switches fast between users for example).
There's more: questions to Xandros get answered fast. (I never ever got a useful answer to anything from SuSE, theres no one there at Fedora, Redhat are too busy with the big end of town etc...). The Xandros site also hosts one of the most useful distro forums out there. And best, anything out there for Debian seems to work sweetly with Xandros, so theres no limit to the (free) customising you can do.

As I say, for two weeks I was a knocker of this pretty thing that seemed so simple. Then I noticed it had become my desktop of choice. For a newbie setting out -as the originator of this thread seems to be - I dont know a better intro to Linux.

Cheers

Between SuSE, Mandrake, and Fedora Core, I think that SuSE has more of a look and feel of XP. Mandrake will install on a wider range of computers. Fedora Core may require you to compile the kernel for wireless or NTFS support.

Both SuSE and Mandrake will not support playing DVD Movies out of the box. Using the search function on this site for XINE and/or Mplayer will point you to where to download versions of Xine, MPlayer and the codecs you will need to view Movies, or wmv9 videos.

I purchased the Professional Edition of SuSE, but I've read that the download version is missing some development tools.
Actually my favorite is Mandrake Linux. There is a PLF site for for better video player versions. And going to the EasyURPMI site will help you set up the Update and Contrib sources on the web.

That's exactly what I meant.

With SuSE, you can download packages for it from the mirrors,... and they will work just fine... same for other distros. Nothing personal to the Xandros fans out there, but I never heard anything good about it. "Better than Windoze," is about the extent of the praise I've heard. I won't repeat the negative stuff I've heard,... there are some children who frequent the board...