Linux Which linux distro

My house mate needs an OS for his pc it's too slow to run Vista and as he only uses it for internet and music so sounds like a prime candidate for a Linux distro, I'm not up speed with linux any more what do think is best?

we want summet that will support fat and Ntfs out of the box. Preferable installing on NTFS formatted drive for ease.

and we have a Philips wireless USB stick

 

You really don't want to install on NTFS its a rubbish FS if you have the choice, ext4 is far superior. Any way best bet is the ubiquitous Ubuntu everything works out the box and there is plenty of user support at all levels. Fedora or Debian are also good distro's but require a bit more work.

The wireless stick is almost certainly not Philips you'll need to get the actual chip set version if it doesn't work out the box.

 

How would go about finding the chip set version iam guessing a good old google.

 

Actually with some google you could find everything you needed.
For finding hardware information ,like your wireless chipset, you should learn how to use the ls command.

Now for the distro part, there are many out there. I like using either Gentoo nor Arch Linux. But the starting point of a gnu/linux newbie should be Ubuntu, Suse or Fedora.

You should also try the many DE's available, like gnome,kde,xfce,lxde and then for the smaller WM's like openbox and tiling wm's like xmonad, scrotwm, awesome3.

There's a whole new world to explore!

Edit: Also look at the bit-tech link about wireless and gnu/linux that doesnt work out of the box, if it doesnt.

 

i found ubuntu a dream to install, dare i say they have made it better than windows to install...

what i did find odd.

playing a FLAC audio file via winamp in XP on my laptop everything was fine and dandy. if i switch over to ubuntu and use amarok for the same audio file it all goes pear shaped and cant handle the bit rates.

something i found odd.

Other than that, ubuntu is a dream, not a single driver installed. wireless worked first time like a dream.

ubuntu is a little on the heavy side for installation size, and i know for a fact it could be smaller, but i have a huge drive and not care. if it works why fix it?

 

I am also using Ubuntu (non techie user), and I found to easy to install and use.

Using Chromium for web browsing and Banshee for my music needs.