Whats the best Linux?

[.Kencs]

I'm looking for a distro of Linux which will recognise my WiFi USB Dongle with no messing around, looks good, easy to use, and will allow me to install Wine easily so I can install Photoshop and Dreamweaver.

I like the look of Linux Ultimate, and I like the ease-of-use of Ubuntu...

So, what would you recommend?

Just done a bit of browsing on Google and seen a lot about Linux Mint for Desktop or Arch for customizing...Which would be the better out of the 2? And ideally would recognise my USB wifi dongle as well

 

[.Kencs]

What make and model is your WiFi dongle?

Netgear WNDA3200

I liked Ultimate Linux, but as I have NO knowledge on linux I couldn't get it to install for whatever reason. Ubuntu 11.10 worked pretty much 'out-the-box' so looking for the same kind of thing, a smooth effect, easy to use and looks good

 

[.Kencs]

Seems you need ath9k_htc, which according to the Arch wiki has been included in the kernel since 2.6.35. So pretty much any distro from the past year or so should pick it up no problem.

I never really saw the appeal of Ultimate, each to their own i suppose. The problem with recommending a distro for a beginner these days is that Gnome 3 was released, but i would still probably say Mint. I mean, you can spend ages on distrowatch trying to find the "perfect distro" or you can just download something and get on with it, change if you don't like it and stick if you do. Every graphical installer i've come across has been incredibly easy to use, and to set up partitions.

Bit of a wildcard, but one i've been keeping an eye on recently that looks great for beginners would be Chakra:

http://chakra-linux.org/index.html

Not the best site, but the distro itself uses KDE and is Arch Based, seems to come with quite a few apps and features that make it easy to use. If you do decide to give it a go then let us know what you think, would you?

Thanks for this advice mate, really appreciate it.
I will give Chakra a go now. Will my Netgear dongle work straight off with it? I wouldn't know where to start to manually install it

 

[.Kencs]

It's actally quite nice. I've been running it for about half hour and not had any negative comments about it yet

Still dont know if i prefer it over Ubuntu, il have to see

 

[.Kencs]

Well, after using Chakra, I decided to give up and stick with Ubuntu 11.10...It's simple and will be ideal for me to use to learn Linux
I also couldn't install Chakra, it kept saying the program had terminated and then wouldnt let me select a partition so not using Ubuntu and im starting to get to grips with things a little better. It's just gonna take a while getting us to the Terminal