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Hi and sorry for the topic that's made 20 bajillion times a day. I tried looking at other topics, but non of them really fitted what I'm asking so I'll just ask and pray for no flames. Windows completely trashed my old computer, so I went out to buy a completely badsaucetacular computer, completely from scratch (and I do believe I've succeeded), but before I install Linux, I want to know what OS is best to suit my needs. I can tell you for a fact that my computer will be fine running absolutely any linux os with no problem at all, it has some extremely amazing hardware, it's not up and running yet (don't have an OS on it) so I can't give you an immediate hardware list, but anything you throw at it, it can handle. I'll find the boxes around the house and try to list what I have on it. I am trying my very very best not to go out and buy, or dual boot with, windows vista. I will if thats what need be, but I'd rather not. Basically, what I really want: Overall compatibility with IMing applications, gaming, anything along those lines. And very very importantly, something that'll run with my wireless N linksys router as there has been some complaints about internet connection problems with some of the linux distros. Thanks for any responses! -Fyreklaer

Ah. Thanks for posting. I do have an ubuntu disc, but when I tried to install it didn't go over so well and after it was at the installing part for over 2 days without any sign of progress, I got a blank screen of doom, and I've come to the conclusion that maybe my chip set is a bit new for ubuntu compatibility.

No clue. My technoguru burned the disc right off his work computer and handed it to me; I'll check out that something or rather 8.04.

Between those three, I like Ubuntu, but its really just a matter of personal preference. As far as ease of use, functionality and support, they're all pretty much equal, just a little different in the way they get from point A. to point B.

If it ain't broke, you aren't trying hard enough.

[quote=proopnarine]Did you have any response from the CD before the blank screen? It is possible that your CD is corrupt (as mentioned earlier), or that it simply was not burned as a bootable CD.[/quote] Yeah, I had some response but strangely my keyboard wouldn't work when I asked it if it wanted to install or something else. It's probably corrupted.

[quote=Shashank Sharma]Sounds to me like you've got a bad disk. The black/blank screen could be for many reasons, such as corrupt disk or unrecognized graphics card. Try some other distro or a new disk and see if that works. You don't have to dual-boot with Windows for your needs. You can easily do IM with any Linux distro. As for games, you'd have to use Wine (http://winehq.org). With Wine, you can install Windows applications and games within Linux. So, once you've settled on one Linux distro and installed it on your machine, search for documentation on installing Wine onto that distro. Personally, I recommend new users to choose between Fedora, Ubuntu, Mandriva or OpenSUSE. They are all very well documented and have a very active community. You've got wikis, forum boards and such, so you'd never be lost. Also, check out the Hardware Compatibility Lists for these distros so you can find out if your hardware will work with these distros. Wireless isn't a problem with Linux either. You might have to use Ndiswrapper for your wireless card if it isn't natively supported, but there's nothing to that. Cheers![/quote] This was a huge help, thanks for posting. I've looked at the different distros you mentioned, and the hardware lists hurt my head so I'll just assumed the latest of the distros will be compatible with the latest hardware. I'm going with Ubuntu. However, when I examined Ubuntu, there was 2 derivative distros I really thought were interesting, namely Kubuntu and Xubuntu. I've made a forum post about that here. [url]http://www.linux.com/forums/topic/1677[/url]