So, it is a universal response around here to tell noobies to play a shoto until you know the basics.
How long exactly is that? When do I know i’m ready to start picking a main and what not? Do I have to be able to beat Ryu’s trial or is it just a guess and hope thing?
I’ve played ryu online, and while i haven’t won, I have gotten a couple or rank B people down to one or two more hits pretty consistently. 
Also, how did you pick your main? Just curious how other people went about it, as I currently can’t decide between 3 of em.
Trials have nothing to do with it. People want new players to use Ryu first because he has a very fundamentals based gameplan, as well as normals that cover just about every situation. To understand how to play Ryu is to understand Street Fighter.
The most popular advice and best advice are not the same thing. Asking that question on almost any fighting game forum will get you drowned with responses about picking shotos, because you get answer from people who are just repeating what someone told them. You do not need to start with shoto, you just need to pick a character that you like and actually learn how to play them.
A much more important question to answer is would you rather play the character that you like the most or the character that you play best.
Don’t misunderstand the whole “play Ryu” thing. I suggest it when a new player really doesn’t have a clue who they want to play. If you really want to play Ibuki, go for it. Just be prepared, you are probably going to need to live in training mode a bit longer than if it was an “easier” character.
That said, it isn’t a time thing. We aren’t telling people to play Ryu for four months two weeks four days and seven hours. It’s a matter of however long it takes to get comfortable with basic footsies, blocking, execution, wake up games, mix ups and so on. We can’t tell you how long that will take.
How I picked my main probably isn’t going to be a lot of use for a new player, but I’ll give you my thought process.
Pior to picking up SF4, I had been playing a lot of CvS2 and ST. I noticed that I was in my comfort zone playing a character that relied on strong pokes; I personally like good buttons. I also favor having good anti air normals as opposed to SRKs. Having a way to reset/run away if I’m not liking the way things are going is also important to me, but perhaps less so.
I also felt like my spacing and fireball game both were OKish, though still quite lackluster. By that token I felt that if I really wanted to improve my game, I needed to work on those aspects of my gameplay.
When considering these kind of factors, I decided that Dhalsim would both play to my strengths and allow me to develop my weaknesses. Subjectively, his gameplay also just looked fun to me. I really liked a lot of things about SF4 Dhalsim compared to his past versions.
This was my thought process as an intermediate level player. Unfortunately, a beginner can’t really weigh these sort of pros and cons due to lack of experience and, frankly, beginners aren’t really good at anything yet.
Thus Ryu is often parroted as the go to character for new players. His gameplay is deverse enough that newbies can experice a lot of different aspects of gameplay and decide which ones they like or are even good at. For new players that don’t want to play Ryu for whatever reason, I tell them just to watch tournament match videos and look for characters that just look fun to them. At the end of the day, the more fun you find your main, the more likely you are to put in the hours.
I know all that, that wasn’t my question, my question was basically how do you know when you know the basics/ryu.
Trouble Brewing, I really don’t have any idea who i want to play. I just liked ibuki the most visually. I have no idea of playstyle yet. Ive been doing trials with all the characters to see who I like. So far i think i’ve narrowed it down to dudley, juri or ibuki.
But I really don’t mind spending more time in training. I’ve got all the time in the world. haha. I have no problem playing as ryu first if that makes the long run easier, but at the same time, I have no problem spending my life in training mode.
You know it is time when you are bored with Ryu. When you are bored, move on.