New to linux, suggestions//help please

Hey guys, so I've decided I wanted to play around a little with linux. Today I got Fedora on my USB but I was wondering if there was a way to get it to save the settings and everything? Everytime I boot off it it is reset to its orginal settings. I guess booting off a USB is kinda like using a live cd but I thought OS's on USBs would be able to save settings and files etc. Is this possible? Maybe with a different distro? Im also looking for a nice, user friendly, stable, customizable, fast distribution of linux. I know that's probably asking too much haha, but what do you guys suggest for someone new with linux? I hear Ubuntu all the time, and my friend just started using Linux Mint. Are there any others you would suggest? I will mainly be using linux for websurfing, writing essays, listening to music, and other general use stuff. Any help appreciated! (this message was typed on fedora! it took me a whole day to get it working lol)
Thanks!

 

You have to save your settings to a file on a USB drive or something. I remember doing that with Puppy Linux.

 

Tactics, Ubuntu/Kubuntu is good for beginners but I think MEPIS is just as good. It is also Debian but uses 'su' instead of default 'sudo' in Ubuntu but other than that, it is very similar since it's based on Debian.

There is good hardware detection in Mepis and if you screw up your video driver configuration, there is a utility that can re-write the driver (VGA/VESA) so that you can try it again.

There is also a LiveCD for it so you can try both to see which one you want or install them both and dual boot.

 

I have tried the most recent versions of Kubuntu, openSuSe, and Mandriva.

For a beginner Mandriva One 2009 is definitely the easiest to use
(Kubuntu 8.10/64-bit had some nasty bugs related to flash and multimedia support
when I tried it, so I cannot recommend it).

Mandriva One 2009 has excellent hardware detection, fast package management, multimedia
support working out of the box, and it gives you easy to use GUIs to perform all the system
administration. Very recommended. The only (small) drawback is that it is 32 bit. It will only
"see" 3GB of RAM even if you have more than that.

If you need 64 bit you should try openSuSe 11.1. Both Mandriva and openSuSe have a very
nice KDE 4.1 desktop.

 

Agree...MEPIS 8 has come a long way....and it's Debian, which is my preference....I'm a Mandriva fan too...but it's RPM based and I always go back to MEPIS or Kubuntu....if you can use one, you can use the other...

 

Thanks for all the advice so far guys! So I got Mandriva installed on a partition on my HD but I have a problem I can't figure out. I can't get it to recognize my bluetooth mouse
When I had Fedora running it found my bluetooth mouse just fine, I was wondering what you guys would do? Also, I don't think I'm getting my full resolution and I don't know how to change it. Is there a max resolution on Mandriva? How do I change my resolution? Thanks guys!

 

BT mouse:

did you do an hcitool scan?
then hidd --connect xx.xx.xx.xx.xx?

 

Screen resolution: In the main KDE menu choose:
Applications - Tools - System Tools - Configure your Computer.

Type in the root password if asked for this. Mandriva Control Center shows up.

From this choose: Hardware - Set up the graphical server - Resolution,
and adjust the resolution in the menu.

Important: Log out and log in again, for the changes to take effect!