franguinho

I want to try a new distro, preferably something easy to set up and start using out of the box cause I'm fairly new to linux...

A definitely plus would be if it could access NTFS so that I could read/write to and from my storage HD. (not sure if this is possible)

Also, I'm aware that a lot of companies are starting to charge for linux distros... I'd like this to be free!

any recommendations/links?

thanks!!!

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redsolar

Writing to NTFS is not a completely supported feature of Linux kernel, so most distributions come with write support disabled in kernel by default. You can enable write support and recompile (when you make appropriate backups).

If you are looking for a user friendly distro, check out Ubuntu Linux, SuSE Home, Mandriva (formerly Mandrake) and Fedora Core. They are pretty decent distros to start with before you start playing with anything more serious, like Gentoo, Debian, or maybe LFS (Linux From Scratch)

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x0ph3r

This is possible, although, as redsolar said, the kernel ntfs-driver isn't quite ready yet, but there is an alternative. I see you don't like that companies are starting to charge users for linux; well you're not going to like this either. The alternative is the Paragon NTFS driver, also known as the ufsd (universal file-system driver). It works, but it's not free.

The kernel ntfs-driver works flawlessly as read-only. It can write too, but not delete files or rename/resize files..

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- x0ph3r

RIV@NVX

There is a driver that uses Microsoft's ntfs.sys for writing, but it's not safe either. Hopefully we will have working NTFS driver at some point, since there is some happening in that direction.

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DamentZ

I would probably choose mepis as it as the most user friendly installation ive seen and it runs from a live cd so you can see if the hardware detection can detect your nic card