Coming from a monolithic IT experience (Windows or Mac OS X) ; you've heard of Linux, and you want to try it, but without someone to guide you ; it can be difficult to choose which distribution to install (read How to choose the best Linux distro for you ).
The first time I was "initiated" into the Linux universe - I didn't plainly understood what was a distribution, a desktop environment, or even more intriguing a release was ?!
To clarify a bit :
Once you selected a distribution (Debian, Linuxmint, Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch-Linux etc ...) - if you want to change, it means a re-installation is required (i.e : once you've installed Debian, if you want to switch to Ubuntu ... boot on CD and re-install)
Within a distribution choosing a desktop environment (Gnome, KDE, LXDE, Xfce, icewm, ...) is just a matter of selecting a package, so you can go back and forth and that doesn't involve more than installing a couple of packages. Usually
Now a release is more or less a level of maturity of a distribution - and it goes from stable, testing to unstable (for the latest versions) - same as previously it's easy to upgrade (from stable to testing for example) or even to mix a couple of packages from testing into a "stable" release, no big deal.
3 online interactive choosers to help you :
- http://polishlinux.org/choose/quiz/
- http://www.tuxs.org/chooser/
- http://www.zegeniestudios.net/ldc/index.php
Last word of advice, a LiveCD is a pretty neat feature to test a distribution (it avoid a full installation on the HD) ; another way (for advanced users) is to create a virtual machine (vm) and after downloading the distribution .iso file to boot from it within the new vm ... that requires a bit more work, but you'll learn a lot.
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