Which Linux flavor should i go with?

[EMOKDOOM]

Less then a week ago i got rid of Windows 7 for Ubuntu. It didn't last long(Like a day), i just didn't like Ubuntu so i went with Fedora.
I've had it for like 3 days and I'm about to punch my computer; everything crashes, the computer never seems to receive the shut down signal, no virtualization software seems to work, apps constantly freeze etc. It's just overall a bad and extremely slow OS.

I'll admit i probably should of tested it before getting rid of windows but i had 7 for about a month and didn't like that either. Since i had XP for 7 years before that, Part of me wants to go back to XP but i'd like to give a new Linux flavor a try. So, from a Linux novice perspective, which distro should i try?

I hear good things about Slackware and Debian, but i heard good things about Fedora too. And although i liked it at first with it's rad desktop functionality, i honestly think it needs a rehaul. I know it's not my computer because it ran W7 like a champ and F18 doesn't seem anywhere near as resource hungry.

If anyone could help in choosing it would be really appreciated as i'm kind of on a dead line and need to get a VM running due to school reasons.

[proxx]

Less then a week ago i got rid of Windows 7 for Ubuntu. It didn't last long(Like a day), i just didn't like Ubuntu so i went with Fedora.
I've had it for like 3 days and I'm about to punch my computer; everything crashes, the computer never seems to receive the shut down signal, no virtualization software seems to work, apps constantly freeze etc. It's just overall a bad and extremely slow OS.

I'll admit i probably should of tested it before getting rid of windows but i had 7 for about a month and didn't like that either. Since i had XP for 7 years before that, Part of me wants to go back to XP but i'd like to give a new Linux flavor a try. So, from a Linux novice perspective, which distro should i try?

I hear good things about Slackware and Debian, but i heard good things about Fedora too. And although i liked it at first with it's rad desktop functionality, i honestly think it needs a rehaul. I know it's not my computer because it ran W7 like a champ and F18 doesn't seem anywhere near as resource hungry.

If anyone could help in choosing it would be really appreciated as i'm kind of on a dead line and need to get a VM running due to school reasons.

Fedora isnt an overall bad and extremely slow OS, its just not.
Its a tried and true concept.

Linux is all about the person controlling it.
No offense intended but you probably didnt configure it correctly.
Dont expect everything just to work out of the box, it often does however.

Well ubuntu is not that bad for beginners actually.
Why didnt you like it?

There is always centOS , openSuse to try.
You could look into crunchbang, archbang.
Plain old debian is rough on beginners so be warned.
So is arch , slackware and gentoo.

I dont like fedora either but thats from experience with linux, its not that it doesnt work because its a great distro but its not my flavour.

[EMOKDOOM]

It just was nowhere near as fast as Windows 7, which was odd considering how resource hungry 7. I don't know the ins and outs of Fedora but a lot of the problems i encountered were just fault of the OS. Such as the computer never being able to shut down and apps not starting for no reason at all. They worked at one point and at some point they decided to stop.

Not sure why i didn't like Ubuntu honestly. Might sound contradicting but it might of seemed to much like W7.

openSUSE seems good. Is it Linux-noob friendly? Would you happen to know if Virtualbox or Vmware run smoothly on it? That's really my main concern, cause like i said i need it for school.

Thanks.

[EMOKDOOM]

Nevermind. https://en.opensuse.org/VirtualBox

I'm gonna give it a shot. I hope it didn't sound like i was flaming Fedora just not having a first good Linux experience. Too much of my work has crashed.

[proxx]

It just was nowhere near as fast as Windows 7, which was odd considering how resource hungry 7. I don't know the ins and outs of Fedora but a lot of the problems i encountered were just fault of the OS. Such as the computer never being able to shut down and apps not starting for no reason at all. They worked at one point and at some point they decided to stop.

Not sure why i didn't like Ubuntu honestly. Might sound contradicting but it might of seemed to much like W7.

openSUSE seems good. Is it Linux-noob friendly? Would you happen to know if Virtualbox or Vmware run smoothly on it? That's really my main concern, cause like i said i need it for school.

Thanks.

Its pretty safe to state to any linux distro is faster than windows, depends on the amount of bloat but in general its more efficient.
With fedora it sounds like you had graphic problems, did you install grahpic drivers?

Well for ubuntu , I mean personally I dont like it but its very preconfigured and thats what makes it easy for the beginner.
Never ever be decived by how a linux distro looks, thats just some frontend and shiny buttons etc.
You can always choose any WM or desktop.
As this is linux its all under your control and you can change anything even down to the source code if thats required.

openSuse is cute , preconfigured and pretty easy.
All GUI fronted stuff, so I would say noob friendly in that way.
WM's or Vboxes work on all distros pretty much.
There is no reason the let this be of any influence when it comes to choice.

(be sure to set hw virtualization in the BIOS if any such option.)

[EMOKDOOM]

Will keep in mind, thanks.

And yeah, not sure if it was graphics but i had to download new AMD drivers because my fan was always on full speed. The drivers made it ran at normal speed.

[PiZZ4]

Will keep in mind, thanks.

And yeah, not sure if it was graphics but i had to download new AMD drivers because my fan was always on full speed. The drivers made it ran at normal speed.

The driver support for AMD cards in Linux is some what, poor. I tried switching myself but the drivers were unstable in Ubuntu. I've been reading around and it looks like Nvidia might have better driver support but I haven't test this out myself.

[proxx]

Recently AMD is making a major shift towards linux.
The suddenly started improving their drivers.
It looks like they finally understood.
So has nvidia btw , ever since the "fuck you" incident

[struct99]

Hello,
Just wanted to throw my 2 cents in, if you really would like to get deep down and dirty and you get enjoyment out of OS install i recommend gentoo ( http://www.gentoo.org/ ) basically you control everything and I mean everything. Good luck mate on distro selection. 

[proxx]

Gentoo is very nice but it is very rough on the newbies.
So is archlinux , which Im currently using and love very much.

But for a beginner some gui's and preconfigurations are easier to begin with.

[EMOKDOOM]

What was the 'fuck you' incident? lol

I actually looked into Gentoo, i liked how simple yet nice it looked. Which was what i wanted out of an OS. I hear it's powerful elsewhere too, but also heard it tosses noobs to the side so i looked elsewhere.

I settled with OpenSUSE gentlemen. I like it so far; not as entirely novice friendly but nothing too unmanageable. It came without the capability of playing mp3s and a lot of other media which was seriously odd. Also trying to get VB running is a bit of hassle but i'm sure i'll get it down soon

[techb]

I will always and forever recommend Arch. I use it on my laptop and on my beagleboard, if I ever get a raspi it will run Arch.

[Uriah]

What was the 'fuck you' incident? lol

I believe Linus Torvalds(coder of original Linux kernel) said fuck you to nvidia, saying that they dont make it a priority to produce hardware for linux. Something like that. I'm surprised his comment had a positive effect, lol, i thought it would reduce Nvidia's support

[EMOKDOOM]

I'd like to eventually run Arch or Slack. I hear good things about both. Like i said though, i'm liking suse and i have to learn my way around Linux so i'll learn with the little chameleon

That's funny if nVidia actually changed their minds for that. I haven't been had this OS for even a week and i already see a lot of borderline BS that can be resolved if some were a bit less stubborn. Can't run Netflix even though i have Firefox, minimal codec support out of box. i know it's shit i can fix but it's somewhat ridiculous that most of it isn't suppose to be tinkered with just because it's not Windows or OSX.

[cuntpunch]

If you want a good performing pre-configured distro which isn't resource hungry Crunchbang is great. That being said, I don't agree with the whole "make it noob proof" philosophy going around these days. If you want to become a proficient Linux user get a distro that lets you do it the hard way. I started with Slackware 7.1. It was a good learning experience. I like starting from the ground up still to this day. I would much rather install what I need than get rid of what I don't. For me this is much efficient.

My favorites have all been mentioned. Arch, Debian, Gentoo, Slackware. The only distro I would really not recommend to a newcomer is Linux From Scratch. Good luck and have fun!