CRSaka..

Maybe I should stop line breaking so much :B

I read the first sentence and replied, it was obvious by the rest of the reply you did indeed read where the post went.  Take my reply as a brief realization of my foot in my own mouth.

OK then. So I guess we are in a general consensus to make a sticky similar to that of the New PC build?
 
EDIT: But also not banning users who ask the questions?

1. That's because Kali is marketed as  a "penetration testing" distro. That means they are protected from the "willingly" aspect of such laws. However, LTT Forums doesn't explicitly declare educational use or explicitly by pass any illegal activity by a EULA for example. So not only is LTT unprotected from such claims the user who suggested it is also equally unprotected. (easily fixed by fixing the tos of the forum to be like most other forums) This is why TV shows have the disclaimer because they've been subjected to such lawsuits. These are all juvenile cases and sealed so I cannot source them.
 
1.1 unfortunately this particular law doesn't actually require you to tell a kid to bring a gun to school the fact that you gave him a gun is enough.
Proof: (Any lawyer worth the money will make such ridiculous jumps to protect a juvenile from felony charges. Blame Game defense is the most used defense for juvenile cases especially when the juvenile in question is obviously guilty of the crime. Seriously I've seen lawyers bring in report cards to undermine charges.)
Kali EULA - North Carolina Law and United States Law for cases involving the use of Kali Linux (if you're using it you've agreed to it)
So now the case is within the jurisdiction of the NC court system let's look at the law.
North Carolina General Statutes 14-316.1. Contributing to delinquency and neglect by parents and others
It's not nearly as much of a stretch as you're suggesting. Though extradition for a misdemeanor is not easy, unless your country has a similar law in which case the OIA will pursue you and failure to appear would just add to the charges. I've never seen you suggest Kali so I apologies for the use of "you" in this.
 
2. I agree. however, this is more about the generic "where do I get started with Linux". Not the I want to be able to watch Netflix, play Steam games, and run MS Office using the most optimized Linux install.
 
3. This is why we want a sticky.

Just being blunt with my views. Sorry if anyone is offended.
Unfortunately, this is a forum that attempts to perform the role of an IRC channel rather than sticking to the traditional purpose of archiving answers to questions so people don't have to repeat their response(that's why "software/hardware forums" exist). Remember most people asking questions are curious and want to learn...spoon feeding answers does not help them in the long run. Critical thinking is a skill and we should attempt to encourage it. But I agree this forum is designed to be an "Open Forum", though I personally feel it would be of more benefit to the users if it were used as a tech tips forum.
Somebody linked one of these in a thread a few weeks ago, though it was completely ignored. Might have been yours. It seemed to be a constructive discussion and much more informative than. "Go with Ubuntu" or "Try installing arch" and the much more irresponsible and potentially criminal advice of "install Kali" or "look into BlackArch". But it is useless when the people asking aren't willing to read about what they are attempting to do.
 
for the TLDRs out there.
1. These posts are rarely unique or previously unanswered.
2. Could lead to legal issues.
3. Specific problems should be addressed in the appropriate forums, IRCs, Mailing Lists, etc..
4. OP @Bigun ban is too much, but I can see a reason to auto lock and point to the sticky, unless overridden by moderator.
5. Bad web etiquette is contagious and spreading it to the youth/new community members will only lead all forums into a abysmal state of misinformation.
 
Suggested Solutions: It would be of benefit to the forum to implement a bot that auto locks and posts a pointer to the appropriate open stickied thread, this could of course be overridden by proper moderators who believe the question has some form of originality that could not be answered with a general explanation.
 
(not to mention (oh wait I'll mention it!) expand the forum policy to enforce at least the basics of generally accepted forum etiquette...you're teaching new members how not to seek advice on forums, and is f'ing with a lot of once great forums. It peeves a lot of us.)
 
adding a legal reason to implement it:
Implementing this would be the same as implementing a no hackintosh policy to protect the forum from legal issues. Look into "contributing to the delinquency of a minor". If one under 18 kid gets charged and has a decent lawyer, they'd go through the blame game to show that the kid is decent and undeserving of punishment. Might even push negligence on the moderators and forum owner that allowed the advice to occur. Just another aspect outside of the it's annoying to see 4+ "what's the best Linux distribution" posts on the front page of the LTT Linux forum.
 
Rarely are these questions unique or unanswered.

Kinda the action I was hinting to.  Yes, banning is too strong a word for what I meant.  

Also, I'd like to add the majority of the Linux community is very much a "RTFM" type of crowd.  Spoon feeding doesn't help either.

Just being blunt with my views. Sorry if anyone is offended.
Unfortunately, this is a forum that attempts to perform the role of an IRC channel rather than sticking to the traditional purpose of archiving answers to questions so people don't have to repeat their response(that's why "software/hardware forums" exist). Remember most people asking questions are curious and want to learn...spoon feeding answers does not help them in the long run. Critical thinking is a skill and we should attempt to encourage it. But I agree this forum is designed to be an "Open Forum", though I personally feel it would be of more benefit to the users if it were used as a tech tips forum.
Somebody linked one of these in a thread a few weeks ago, though it was completely ignored. Might have been yours. It seemed to be a constructive discussion and much more informative than. "Go with Ubuntu" or "Try installing arch" and the much more irresponsible and potentially criminal advice of "install Kali" or "look into BlackArch". But it is useless when the people asking aren't willing to read about what they are attempting to do.
 
for the TLDRs out there.
1. These posts are rarely unique or previously unanswered.
2. Could lead to legal issues.
3. Specific problems should be addressed in the appropriate forums, IRCs, Mailing Lists, etc..
4. OP @Bigun ban is too much, but I can see a reason to auto lock and point to the sticky, unless overridden by moderator.
5. Bad web etiquette is contagious and spreading it to the youth/new community members will only lead all forums into a abysmal state of misinformation.
 
Suggested Solutions: It would be of benefit to the forum to implement a bot that auto locks and posts a pointer to the appropriate open stickied thread, this could of course be overridden by proper moderators who believe the question has some form of originality that could not be answered with a general explanation.
 
(not to mention (oh wait I'll mention it!) expand the forum policy to enforce at least the basics of generally accepted forum etiquette...you're teaching new members how not to seek advice on forums, and is f'ing with a lot of once great forums. It peeves a lot of us.)
 
adding a legal reason to implement it:
Implementing this would be the same as implementing a no hackintosh policy to protect the forum from legal issues. Look into "contributing to the delinquency of a minor". If one under 18 kid gets charged and has a decent lawyer, they'd go through the blame game to show that the kid is decent and undeserving of punishment. Might even push negligence on the moderators and forum owner that allowed the advice to occur. Just another aspect outside of the it's annoying to see 4+ "what's the best Linux distribution" posts on the front page of the LTT Linux forum.
 
Rarely are these questions unique or unanswered.

Can we see the kernel panic error (at least a screenshot)?  Has he ran hardware checks on the system to make sure there isn't something like bad RAM?  What is the output of the last 50 lines of the latest /var/log/messages?

Yeah. Just to add on to this (and I should have actually put it into my original post, I'll edit it in) here's the link to the Arch Wiki (which is pretty comprehensive). Between the YouTube video I linked, and the Arch Wiki (which you can find here https://wiki.archlinux.org/) you should be able to easily get started

Arch's documentation and package managment are "straightforward and simple" compared to Gentoo's. They are both higher level Linux distros (minimalistic), but for this question I'd honestly push the other way Gentoo is slightly more difficult than Arch.

Here is a good guide for choosing a Linux Distro
 

get a ipad. Unless you have accesss to source code, you can't run it on anything else.

The 700 USD app.... Fun

If you actually want to learn, try them all. Break things. Fix things. RTFM and wonder what you're doing at 1am trying to recompile your kernel.
 
Either set up a physical machine you can trash, or create a virtual machine. With Virtualbox you have the benefit of snapshots so you can set "save" points before doing something risky or unknown.
 
Try Kali, but I guarantee you won't use 99% of the pre-installed packages until you are at the very least comfortable in your shell. Everything pre-installed is tailored to infosec, not day to day use. As a good learning exercise, pick a tool that comes with Kali (e.g wireshark) and install it on Debian. man -k <query> is your friend. Once you've worked out how to use the package manager, try building something from source. Learn what GNU means.
 
Try a few different distros from different trees, there are many to choose from (if you're overwhelmed, at least try something Debian based and something Redhat based). Try different window managers like Gnome, KDE, XFCE and LXDE. Try different shells besides bash. Just try it and see for yourself.

You're welcome. The author is a little "aggressive", but the information is useful. It'll help you out a lot if you seek assistance outside of the LMG Forums.

I get the same error for the package. xfce4-mixer is only available up to the wily repos. It is unavailable on xenial and yakkety repos. Sorry about that.
 
When installing xfce4 on xenial, pavucontrol which is a volume mixer was installed, so default on ubuntu for xfce4 would be pavucontrol when xfce4-mixer is unavailable. sorry about that. Updating suggestion to reflect this. pavucontrol is available on all mirrors so I will exclude xfce4-mixer from the suggestion.

Ok, you guys are gonna hate me (probably) but I'm honestly gonna recommend that you start with Arch.
Before you castrate me, hear me out on this one:
-Yes, the Arch install is a f*cking pain in the ass x100.
-Yes, you will type in some commands and have 0 idea what they mean and do
 
HOWEVER
If you want to learn about UNIX, the basic commands, and just learn how your computer works (how it boots, what is an EFI partition, what does all this sh*t mean/do) then there is no better way to learn than to do it yourself.
 
So with that said, here's what I recommend you do.
Step 1: Get a new/wiped HDD that you don't give a sh*t about. (there's a very good reason for this, you might f*ck up and accidentally wipe it, or have to wipe it after you f*ck up).
Step 2: Unplug all the other drives from your system before you start (this reduces the chance of you wiping a drive you didn't mean to, it's easier than it sounds).
Step 3: Follow this guide on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMkST5IjSjY
Step 4: THIS IS IMPORTANT!!! In order to actually learn anything, you can't just blindly type in whatever you see in the video. GOOGLE EVERYTHING. Does he type in a command and you don't know what it means? Get your laptop or your phone and google that shit.
 
It's a time consuming, and daunting process for a noob, but you'll learn a lot and I highly recommend it.
Good luck!
 
EDIT: The arch wiki is also an awesome resource. You can find it here: https://wiki.archlinux.org/

Currently getting my BS in CS with a cybersecurity specialization. There is a lot of non-technical work involved. You will need to be able to write and enforce good security policies. Interning you will find that the biggest threats to a company are internal.

@Electronics Wizardy how comes people say it's no good for beginners

Linux mint or Fedora would be my recomendation. Mint is very close to Ubuntu but imho with far better interface options (Unity really sucks it was never meant to be for desktop usage but thought around touch devices) and Fedora well there's some differences and as a career choice you're more likely to run into Redhat (Fedora is basically the consumer version of Redhat).
 
While it's true that any distro will really serve you well to learn command line I consider easier to use distros better since you can always rely more on the GUI tools if you get stucked.

Centos is rhel.
 
Fedora is newer and basically a beta for redhat.

Ubuntu (or it's spins) or Linux Mint, they're definitively the most noob-friendly. Do NOT use Kali, it isn't meant for desktop use in the first place, especially for someone learning.

I haven't used it so I can't say for sure, but I'm pretty sure that's a no. Kali really just shouldn't be used as a desktop installation.

Yes, it is only really made for penetration testing. Everything runs in root, which can be dangerous if you don't know what you're doing.
 
Don't even try it unless you really know what you're doing. It's installation is very advanced

I have been watching the videos for ages (hence finding out about the give-away). Well, I say watching the videos - mostly I skip the boring talky bits and go straight to the sponsor spots to marvel in their professionalism. That slickness doesn't grow on trees you know.