Hi,
I'm gonna get my dad's old laptop and run linux on it so I can do some web developement over the summer. Anyone know what's the best distribution for that? Thanks

PS. I am a linux noob so keep that in mind.

I prefer CentOS, it's basicly a rebranded version of Redhat. It's very stable and easy to use.

Go for broke and get your hands on slackware

All distro's are fully tooled up for web development, some are easy to isntall and others are not. I dont realy recommend slackware (its a bit of a beach) but others easy to get started ones include Fedora (which i use) mandrake Debian SuSe (infat its a long list).

Happy linuxing.

If you choose Fedora you can receive excellent free support at forums.fedoraforum.org

Ibbo

Ubuntu which is based on Debian is growing in popularity very fast. I think it's supposed to be easy for beginners as well.

its a bit of a beach

What does that mean?!!?!

There is one thing you have to remember when it comes to linux distros. There is no such thing as the 'best' one. We can only give you suggestions on what to try out. Especially for web development, because all you need is a text editor (vi, pico, nano, emacs, etc) and a browser (firefox, of course) and if your doing server side scripting, a web server (apache).

All of those are free and usually come with the distro (with the exception of apache and sometimes firefox).

I'd suggest you take a look at distrowatch.com, download about 5 or 6 different distros and try them out and see what you like.

thanks everyone!!! I'll take a look at all of those.

I think for a newbie I would suggest Fedora Core 3, SuSe or Ubuntu.

What does that mean?!!?!

Its a web friendly way of swearing.

Have you given slackware a go? If so i gather you already know what it meant.

But then thats much easier than getting solaris on an I386 which I dont recommend ayone trying who may have a dodgy heart.



Ibbo

I'm going from Mac. But its on an old Dell Inspiron 7500 laptop. Ubuntu keeps freezing. I'm giving it another try.

Kanotix. It's quite noob friendly, and has the best hardware support of any linux.
And like all linux' it's easy to install a web/file/mail server on it.