Wow, that's a loaded question.   I can't tell you what's best for you.  You have to find out for yourself.   Here is what I can tell you from my experience.

I started with Slackware.   I wouldn't say that's a good distro for a beginner.  It is, however, very light and portable.

I then moved to Redhat and later Fedora.  Fedora is great in terms of ease of use.   It's very friendly to a Windows user.   I will say that it sucks in terms of its packager (what you use to load software and do upgrades, it's similar to add/remove programs and windows installer). 

Ubuntu is based on Debian and is currently my favorite distribution of Linux.   The package manager is fantastic, making it easy to install and upgrade software.   It's very user friendly.   I actually have a box running that I call the "fakintosh."  I made Ubuntu look like OS X, which you are familiar with.   It is highly customizable.

I also use the BackTrack distribution.   BT4 is Debian based as well.  It has the familiar apt-get functionality.   I primarily use it in VmWare on my Windows boxes. 

I think that you should just give one a try.   If you don't like, scrap it and install another one.   It's good practice anyway.

Howdy,

This is sorta like asking drummers who the best drummer in the world is.    You're not going to get a convergent answer, and in the process you may just get a bunch of wailing and gnashing of teeth.  :-)

I think the best version of Linux -- particularly if you're learning -- I think is the one for which you can find the easiest support.  What do close friends/coworkers use who are more experienced than you who wouldn't mind answering a specific question of ya once in a while?  Or who you can actually sit with from time to time?     


I think for a noob though, it's hard to argue too much with Ubuntu or a hard drive Backtrack 4 (which is Ubuntu based).   You'll find loads of online support for either in either the Ubuntu and/or Remote Exploit forums, and it's an easy enough distro to maintain that you're likely to find users of it locally or among your circle of peeps. 

There is, however, a case for a noob that has some time and wants to REALLY learn how everything works under the covers,  to go through the pain and the agony of installing and keeping Gentoo Linux up to date.      I'd recommend this only if you have a fast machine that's going to be hosting it (because it'll be compiling stuff a lot), and you have a patient buddy who runs it that you can bug with questions.   You'll learn a ton going the the Gentoo Guide step by step, but it's not pretty.    Myself, I'm over it and don't have time for gentoo care/feeding, but I did learn a lot that other more friendly distributions these days keep you from ever seeing/caring about.   gentoo.org

Good luck and enjoy!

Considering you are new to linux, I'd go with Ubuntu.  It is very user friendly and will ease you into the world of Linux.  Backtrack is almost universally considered the best security distribution though.

I believe there is no question about it and Ubuntu is the way to go. I use it in pentests and love it. The amount of community support and how well most security tools compile on it makes it the choice for someone new to Linux.  It was a great choice and interesting to note that it was decided to move Backtrack to this distro ,so perhaps that says something in itself. In the past Backtrack was never considered a very good distro, but a very good collection of tools. It was cumbersome to install programs on Bactrack due to its modular construction and the lack of certain libraries. 

Not too unfriendly?   As of 2 years ago at least, gentoo was nothing short of a ridiculous.  I've got the biggest love/hate relationship with portage that you've ever seen.    Compiling everything from source is definitely sexy, but even if you have veteran gentoo-ites as close friends, I'd still be loathe to recommend it to a noob. 


Or has anything changed significantly in the past 2 years to make gentoo less of a nightmare for first install / maintenance / resolving portage package conflicts / trying to get X to work again after every friggin xorg update?

(not that I'm bitter, mind you lol)

Backtrack based on Ubuntu?  Since when?  It's based on SLAX.  Version 3 is anyway.  Personally, I don't like Ubuntu, but I will concede it's a good distro for those who are new to Linux and it's easy to install.  Slackware, Arch, Fedora and OpenSUSE are all worth consideration for a desktop Linux system.

A vote for Ubuntu here. BT4 is based on Ubuntu.