[BadassFractal]

Thanks for the tip! Ignoring the educational aspect altogether for a second, what does one lose by using less glamorous / widely popular distros of Linux such as the one you recommended? Is there generally a good reason to stick to something like Ubuntu, or does it really not matter?

[the-come-ons]

I feel there is more freedom to choose exactly what system I want to create for my needs with Arch over Ubuntu. I love the Arch community and I enjoy using the forum system more than Ubuntu's. Also, I hang out in the #archlinux channel and people are super friendly and helpful!

Ubuntu tends to be recommended for novices coming from Windows or Mac who are also unsure of the command line. My brother installed it after he purchased a cheap laptop. He came from Mac OS X and fell in love. After learning more, he installed Mint and really enjoys it. He is programming now! Obviously Ubuntu is for advanced users also. It just so happens that it is accessible to beginners as well which is great!

When switching distros, say from Debian to Arch, you should embrace the idea that fundamentals are completely different. Package management, for instance, must be re-learned. And the way daemons and modules are initialized and configured is different and plenty of other things! You are going to lose context and that can be the most frustrating part of switching. If you can overcome that and succeed at the new tools, you will have gained more skills.

The great thing about Linux is that it is free software. I love to experiment with Virtualbox and lots of distros for fun. I would encourage you to try a few, a couple non debian based, and see if you enjoy them more.

[PattN]

One good reason to stick with Ubuntu( or Mint-which is essentially Ubuntu with few items different) is the availability of drivers. If you are using any hardware from known makers like dell,HP etc. chances are, you will see it working fine right out of the box. For example I have a all-in-one from HP it has drivers already available. Same way I have a USB wireless network adapter and it worked just fine. You can run the LiveCD make sure your system runs as it should and then dual boot or virtualize.If you are windows user and start with idea of learning the hard way, you may not take a full dive at all. I have been using Ubuntu almost for 2 years and still consider myself a newbie as I dont know how to do many things still. You could try Ubuntu-GNOME for best driver support or Mint Linux GNOME