Winter Knight
Group: Members
Posts: 146
Joined: April 2006 |
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Posted: Dec. 14 2006,10:34 |
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The classical answer is "Try a bunch, and use the one you like." However, Ubuntu seems to be the distro of choice for new users. I tried it, and liked it. Not enough to use it rather than debian, though.
As for mounting automatically, edit /etc/fstab. You want "auto" under options for all of the hard drives you want to be automatically mounted at boot up. If you don't know how, you can find instructions for writing this file properly on the internet.
Like hats said, hard drives unmount when linux is properly shut down. Was your Dad using the "It's a LiveCD, so I'll just cut the power" shortcut? I find it odd that it would kill a Windows partition, though. That almost never happens. If it was a Windows NTFS partition, DSL would have mounted it read-only, and I don't think that particular mistake would even have a chance of killing it.
So, probably Ubuntu for beginners. Or Xubuntu for older hardware, or if you're family is more minimal. Xandros and Linspire are linux distros designed to be Windows-like. I haven't tried them.
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