Guys,

What are the differences between linux distribution?
What are themost popular and why?

Salu2!

This question has been asked before. Do a search here at LQ and you will find some info. Google is also your friend.

Check out http://distrowatch.com/

Next to all the usual advice, it's smart to use what your friends are using. Advice from a friend leads usually easier and faster to solving a problem.

Advice on the internet is always well intended, but cannot cover every little detail of a problem, especially not from a beginners point of view.

If you don't have 'geek' friends, start simple by using a Live cd like Knoppix and work your way up to Debian, Gentoo or Slack.

Fedora, Debian, Mandrake, Suse, Gentoo, Slack are some of the most popular ones. There are too many differences to name. They all do the same thing just in different ways. Try a live CD before doing anything.

I definitely agree with the thing about if your friends are using Linux. I just installed Linux on a friend's computer. Even though a smaller distro (Feather or Damn Small Linux) may have been a better choice for her hardware, I installed Mepis, because that's what I use. That way, if she has problems, she can say, "How do you do this in Mepis?" and I can try it out at home and get back to her more quickly than if she were using another distro.

Another factor should be what works for your hardware. You'll always get people saying, "This distro is best for beginners" or "That distro is best for beginners." Ultimately, the most important thing is which distro recognizes your video card, your monitor resolution, your sound card, your disk drives, your mouse, etc. If a distribution can do this, that's the distribution for you. You can always figure out ways to tweak other stuff (how it looks, how it behaves, what apps are installed). Unfortunately, there's no easy way to tell what distro recognizes your hardware best. You just have to start trying some.

Of course, there are some distros that will definitely work with your hardware because you have to configure them manually from scratch (Gentoo, Debian, Slackware). That means, though, that you have to configure them manually from scratch. Most beginners aren't up for that.

Now, how do you get ahold of a distro? Well, if you have a super-fast internet connection and a CD burner, just start downloading ISOs and burn the images as CD images (not just straight data). Then boot from the CD and get started. Great live CDs to try are Ubuntu and Mepis.

If you don't have easy access to fast internet and a burner, try looking at Linux books. Most Linux books are Red Hat Linux ones and tend to come with a copy of Red Hat in the back. You can buy these or check them out from the library. Point-and-Click Linux is a book that has an older version of Mepis.

You can look at the top at Distrowatch. Personally, I'd recommend trying Blag Linux, Mepis, Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Mandriva, and SuSE. That's a pretty good sampling.

What about aLinux?

Well having never heard of it I have nothing bad to say about it, but this is a perfect example of what was mentioned above. If you come into the forum saying I have aLinux and I'm having this probelm it may be a little more difficult to get help with distribution specific issues because not as many people run aLinux as Suse, Fedora, Debian, Mandrivea, or Slackware (What I consider the big Five.)

Getting help for one of the Big Five will be much easier than one of the lesser known distros. aLinux may absolutely rock.. but I may skip answering a question on it because I am unfamiliar with it and wouldn't want to steer you wrong.

I might suggest they look at the aLinux forums.
No, actually you are totally correct that choosing a widely used distribution is a very good idea for a newbie.
And great advice here also.
There are lots of things that posters think are default on all Linux distros that are not and their replies can sometimes be confusing because of this. Even something that is common can work slightly different on one distro or even version than another.

And for the OP...
A Linux distribution is the Linux kernel bundled with additional software. Usually things like GNU utilities, GUI desktops, Office software and etc. They have different system tools and different default styles and settings. A Linux distribution can be anything from a single purpose floppy to a DVD with thousands of software packages. Find and read the home pages for a few distros you are interested in. Things like being able to purchase a retail CD/DVD and printed documentation may be important to you for your first distro. There is usually a hardware compatibility list available on their websites.
Good Luck.

HAH, If I see one more person tell someone with Debain or Ubuntu to issue a telinit 3 to change from graphical mode to text mode... or to change their inittab to default to run level 3 so they don't boot into graphics mode.. AHHHHH Perfectly legit advice for many other distros but completely and utterly useless for Debians default runlevel setup..

And that's exactly why I mentioned that

Almost exactly why I wrote it..

In Debian, telinit 3 will certainly end an X session and drop you to a login prompt in Single User Mode. Isn't that the same thing?

EDIT: Oh no. That's telinit 1 ... What was I thinking.