Whats a good Unix OS

[dontknowdontcare]

Hello,

I've got a spare laptop and wanted to put some kind of Unix based OS on their so I can start to familiarise myself with it and learn how to use it. What's a good one to go for? Something with a GUI thats good for someone new to unix would be good.

Any useful online resources, guides or tutorials that any of you know about would be helpful also. I'll do some searching around on the net but you may know somewhere I won't be able to find.

thanks

[RobRich]

UNIX, or UNIX-like? When it comes to actual UNIX operating systems, you can look towards Solaris or one of the various BSD distributions.

If you are okay with UNIX-like operating systems featuring high levels of POSIX compliance, then you can look at one the multitude of Linux distributions. Ubuntu comes well recommended for first time Linux users. I am personally inclined to say Mandriva or MEPIS, but in reality, the selection is so large that people probably could be recommending different Linux distributions for the next 5+ pages of this discussion.

For whatever it is worth, I rarely deploy Linux on my personal systems anymore. I have been migrating towards BSD, which is more of a personal decision, though BSD does present several rather nice security and stability positives. My BSD distribution of choice right now is PC-BSD, largely because it utilizes the PBI application installation format. The PC-BSD interface is rather straightforward, so it might be something for you to check out assuming you do not instead go the Linux route.

[dontknowdontcare]

thanks, i'll look in to it