yeah ive always heard the linux distros would be the best for newbies, but netbsd installed easier for me than did suse linux, netbsd detected my ethernet card that suse couldnt even tell was there, also id say that netbsd would be better for beginers because you will learn faster how to get things set up on your computer, like setting up the dhcp client, or configuring routing, whereas with suse linux everything is done for you. but thats just my opinion.

I think RedHat will be best choice for beginners. But, everything is relate what do you want from your UNIX box and what is your plans. If you are learning UNIX to work in the future in commercial UNIXs, most if them are System V (HP-UX, Solaris, AIX etc), Linux is better. But if you will work on commercial UNIXs which based on Berkley source (BSD based), FreeBSD is that you need.

Try EBAY you will get solaris (intel version) for Under 20 Bucks .

yea, my friend is a windows user, and only uses the gui so he isn't the best with programing. me, as a GNU/Linux user, am able to get the programs he wants but i am not able to help him out all the time. i was thinking of going along the lines of SUSE or Solaris 10 for his box. he wanted the desktop feel and i am trying to migrate him away from windows, a. to save money and b. since windows is starting to become harder to use for the average user, in my sight. for a person who is not willing to really learn the coding of unix or linux, would getting SUSE or Solaris be good for him. or would it take work to settup and run? from a user point of view, not a sorta coder point of view.

both of windows and unix are useful !

Try taking a look at the sun website where you can download for free the developer edition of Solaris for x86. This comes with a number of compilers and other tools included.

Here's the link to the Solaris download page: Solaris Operating System - Get Solaris 10

The one problem with learning on Linux is that there are so many distributions and most have differences between them. I, too, recommend FreeBSD where everything is more centralized.