I know we've bandied about our suggestions for the distros to make 
available for installation at the InstallFest, but I don't recall if 
any decisions were made or not. The decision was made, however, to 
use the InstallFest to simply get something installed quickly and 
well, and not turn the InstallFest into anything more complicated 
than that. If someone comes in and asks for a specific distro, we 
should try to accomodate them if possible and practical. But if they 
have no idea what they want, these three distros are well-made, very 
simple and fast to install:

SimplyMepis. It's Debian-based and can resize an NTFS partition. It's 
a live-cd with one of the fastest, simplest installations of any 
distro. It was designed to be a desktop OS- uses KDE. The fact that 
it's a live-cd is a bonus. Being a live-cd, you can see if it'll work 
with the client's hardware before installing it. It seems to 
recognize certain hardware that some distros have problems with. 
Unlike Knoppix (which is a great live-cd), it doesn't lose it's 
hardware detection/configuration once it's installed on the 
harddrive. Important for newbies, it has simplified menus compared to 
Debian and Knoppix. On the negative side, sound is sometimes 
problematic.

There is a book people can get called "Point-and-Click Linux" that 
uses SimplyMepis. Newbies can basically install it, buy the book and 
have a great user guide to refer to.

PCLinuxOS (PCLOS). Also a live-cd that is made to be installed on the 
harddrive without breaking. Based on Mandrake but with many bugfixes 
and without the bloat. Fast, simple installation like SimplyMepis. It 
has the nice Mandrake Control Center tools for configuring 
everything. Whatever you think of GUI tools, these are one of the 
reasons Mandrake is considered so newbie-friendly. Many people say it 
has the best selection of "best-of-breed" software of any desktop 
Linux. I've used Mandrake and like PCLOS much better!

Ubuntu. Also Debian-based, but uses Gnome instead of KDE. Has a 
live-cd so people can see if it'll detect all their hardware. Nice 
menus and organization from the desktop. I liked it a LOT but don't 
recommend it for people with dialup modems. The "Warty Warthog" 
version has got a known bug with dialup modems. Lighter and faster 
than a distro that uses KDE, but possibly not quite as 
newbie-friendly as PCLOS or Mepis. I'm not sure if it comes with a 
CD-burning app.

Just my $0.02.
Siri Amrit


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