Member Avatar for higherGround574

does anyone know of a good distro that offers a downloadable iso .. and the gnome environment???

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by jbennet

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A short, practical guide to pick a downloadable-ISO distro with GNOME, built from the replies already in this thread.

Many of the contributors have already pointed out that GNOME is widely available; the real decision is which workflow you want. If you want an easy, click-through experience (as prefers), choose a distro with a friendly graphical installer and good hardware detection. If you want a guided learning experience like describes, a source-based distro will teach a lot but expect long compile times. If you want to test before committing, follow and boot a live image or live USB first so you can check graphics, network and peripherals without changing your disk.

Quick checklist to narrow the choice:

  • Try a live image or VM first to confirm display, wifi and sound work.
  • Decide binary vs source: binary = fast installs and prebuilt packages; source = custom optimization but slower.
  • Pick a package ecosystem you like (some use apt-style tools, others rpm/pacman/emerge).
  • Prefer an LTS or stable release for a daily driver; pick rolling if you want cutting-edge packages.
  • Check community and documentation — a good wiki/forum makes troubleshooting far easier.

Simple steps to test and install:

  • Verify the ISO checksum before writing it to media.
  • Use a live USB or VM to test boot, graphics, and networking.
  • If graphics fail on first boot, try the distro's safe/nomodeset option or a non-free driver later.
  • Back up any data before repartitioning; consider using a separate data partition.

Tiebacks: and are right that GNOME is common, and others note many beginner-friendly choices exist, and shows the value of hands-on learning. Pick the path that matches whether you want ease-of-use now or a deeper learning curve.

Recommended Answers

All 8 Replies

Member Avatar for jbennet

Red hat Fedora Core has Gnome by default with optional KDE

Member Avatar for alc6379

I think you can say the answer is LOTS-- Fedora's a good one, but you could just about pick any distro to do that, and have Gnome available.

What kind of user do you consider yourself to be? A power user? A newbie? What are you planning on doing with the system?

By the way, this post needs more cowbell! Love the avatar!

Member Avatar for HenryVI

Yes, Fedora is very nice for a newb. It comes wih a graphical installer which is why I'm not trying any other distro unless it has that.

Member Avatar for hollystyles

I tried Red Hat back at version 7, but never got going with it I just couldn;t get my head round the Linux way of thinking and device support was not so good then.

My next forray into Linux came with Fedora, I had a better experience setting up but I found the X system full of little annoying glitches.

I finally plumbed just this month for Gentoo, now many will say this is not a distro for Newbs, but I am a Linux newb and the Gentoo handbook is very easy to follow. Also by the time I had been through it I had learnt so much by the time I had a KDE desktop up and running I was feeling more like an expert and so far I have got more out of using it as the install process has 'groomed' me along the way.

Also it runs much more smartly and cleanly cos you build Gentoo from source so it's more optomised for your particular hardware.

It's not for the impatient though !! installing KDE by compiling from source is easy with Gentoo (just one command: 'emerge kde') but it takes Hours !!! mine took about 36 hours on a celleron 1.3ghtz

Member Avatar for mawe

Hi!

I recommend Ubuntu.

Regards, mawe

Member Avatar for Member #2466

Nice part about any distro that uses synaptic as a package manager...

You can install gnome with no problems. Don't limit yourself to Fedora and Ubuntu.

Try MEPIS, PCLinuxOS...both of those have LiveCD (try before you settle) installers...you can actually install from the desktop when you're booted up into it. Nice eh? Give those a go...you'll like them.

Member Avatar for ardentsunshine

When I was a newb the first distro I installed was slackware. Mine didn't have a gui. It was a great experience using hot-tos to configure my box. It's a little difficult but overall fun.

Member Avatar for jbennet

For a newb I recoomend SuSE 10. It has laods of softaware, a large following, nice hardware detection, easy installation and great GUI configuration tools. Also, when installing you can choose to have the Gnome desktop.

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