Getting Started with linux

[Linux for blind general discussion]

Slint is essentially Slackware with a few modifications. I broke 
Slackware several times, which is actually why I left it early on. It 
was my first experience with Linux, but I wouldn't say it was my most 
enjoyable experience. I eventually broke things on purpose in other 
distributions in order to learn how to fix them, and I guess I can thank 
Slackware for that LOL. I actually found Red Hat, which became Fedora, 
to be one of the easiest to use out of the box, and it is kept updated 
better than Ubuntu, which is arguably one of the easiest of all to use 
overall. Actually, Arch is great once you get it going, but there is a 
lot that can break while you're installing, so I don't recommend it for 
people who just want to see what things look like. My personal 
recommendations for seeing what things look like and how well they work 
right out of the box would be either Fedora Live Workstation

https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/releases/35/Workstation/x86_64/iso/Fedora-Workstation-Live-x86_64-35-1.2.iso

or the version I personally use: Fedora Mate Compiz

https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/releases/35/Spins/x86_64/iso/Fedora-MATE_Compiz-Live-x86_64-35-1.2.iso

Both of these include the Orca screen reader on the iso itself. 
Workstation allows you to press alt+super+s to start Orca on the 
desktop, and MATE-Compiz starts it by pressing alt+f2 and entering

orca

in the run window that pops up. Either way, the installer is fairly easy 
to use, and I have successfully installed both to a hard drive and to a 
USB thumb drive without breaking anything. You can of course "try before 
you buy," just like you can with Ubuntu, meaning that you have full 
access to the system without installing to anything at all, and then if 
you decide you do want to install, you just start the installer and set 
it up according to your needs.


That said, Fedora and Ubuntu both have very large and helpful user 
bases, and community support is far easier to get when you need help. 
Ubuntu probably has the largest user base of all, and this is a good 
thing for those people who are getting started. I cannot overestimate 
the benefit of broad and diverse community support, and both Fedora and 
Ubuntu offer such support owing to their large numbers of users and 
their willingness to help each other. So based on this alone, I would 
recommend either Fedora or Ubuntu over just about anything else, and 
Fedora is my personal choice due to its frequent software updates even 
in a release.

~Kyle