If you want a super-duper easy install of Linux, I would definitely recommend
Suse Linux. It was the first distribution of Linux I was ever exposed to, and I assure you that I had very minimal knowledge of Linux when I installed it. Once you have the installation CD\'s (downloadable free via FTP and burned onto CD-R) it\'s just a matter of booting from the first CD to run the install wizard.
And seriously, the installation wizard is just as easy as installing any version of Windows. It recognizes pretty much any device (even my USB mouse) and configures it automatically. All you need to do is provide some basic information and the setp will take care of the rest.
When it comes to installing to your hard drive, the setup (I\'m 90% sure that it\'s this distro that has it) has a feature that will resize your Windows partition (I can\'t remember if it\'s only FAT/FAT32 or if NTFS will work as well) and create another partition on your hard drive to install Linux on.
NOTE: ONLY use this option if you do not have any other hard drive you could use to install Linux on, and if you have at least 3 gigabytes of space free on your drive. If you do choose this option, MAKE SURE you do the following:
1) Assume that the worst may happen, and your partition becomes corrupted (it\'s not likely to happen, but it\'s always possible, so you must prepare for the worst)
2) Backup all critical data to a place other than your hard drive (trust me, I\'ve heard of people backing up data to the same hard drive; this doesn\'t help any
). Use CD/DVD-R/RW, another computer on the network, external storage (USB drive, zip drive), or anything else that stores data off your hard drive
3) Run the defragmentation utility that comes with Windows. The easiest way to do this is to open \"My Computer,\" right-click the drive you want to defrag, select \"Properties,\" go to the \"Tools\" tab, and click \"Defragment Now...\" (I\'m running WinXP, so the exact location may be slightly different; if all fails run Windows Help and search for \"defragment\")
4) Make sure you have an appropriate Restore CD (these usually come with pre-made computers) or a set of Windows CD\'s and all the install CD\'s that you would need to do a complete reinstall of your system.
Simply put: Do not proceed with this option unless you are 100% sure you could restore your previous setup in case. Even if you know what you\'re doing and already have a separate partition on your hard drive set aside for Linux, follow these steps anyway.
Again, if you choose this option, everything
should work fine. However, I cannot stress enough how something could go wrong, and cause you to loose all of your data.
Now that I\'ve said all this, don\'t come crying to me if you didn\'t pay attention and erased everything on your computer. I feel no symapthy for you.
Finally, you can feel safer knowing that the install will not do ANYTHING to modify your system until all settings have been specified, and a summary screen comes up. In essence, the message is \"The following changes will be made you computer. Please review each step carefully to ensure that it is correct, and press the \'Next\' button to continue.\" Until this point, any changes, including re-partitioning and formatting will not be applied. So feel free to tinker around and try different settings, because it won\'t take effect until this screen.
If you have any more questions, feel free to chat in the dev IRC channel (where usually I or some other knowledgable person will be present to help you) or send me a PM.
Have fun, and happy Linuxing!!
EDIT: I forgot to mention that the complete Suse installation includes 7 or more CD\'s. The first CD is the base system, and I think it also has GNOME and KDE (the graphical environments, be sure to install one or you\'ll be stuck with a command prompt) on it. The rest of the CD\'s contain a lot of applications, and I think the 6th or 7th CD contains the kernel source code (useful if you want to compile your own kernel, but that\'s an advanced topic for another day
). So you should be able to get by with only the first CD, but I would recommend probably the second and third as well, as they probably contain some of the more useful apps.
EDIT: Oh yeah, and make sure you get the i386 version, unless you\'re using a Mac or an Amiga or something...
