How can I do SELECT UNIQUE with LINQ?

Question

I have a list like this:

Red Red Brown Yellow Green Green Brown Red Orange 

I am trying to do a SELECT UNIQUE with LINQ, i.e. I want

Red Brown Yellow Green Orange  var uniqueColors = from dbo in database.MainTable                    where dbo.Property == true                    select dbo.Color.Name; 

I then changed this to

var uniqueColors = from dbo in database.MainTable                    where dbo.Property == true                    select dbo.Color.Name.Distinct(); 

with no success. The first select gets ALL the colors, so how do I modify it to only get the unique values?

If there is a better way of structuring this query, more than happy to go that route.

How do I go about editing it so I can have .OrderBy( "column name" ) i.e. alphabetically by color name, so name property?

I keep getting a message:

The type arguments cannot be inferred from the usage. Try specifying the type arguments explicitly.

Answer 1

The Distinct() is going to mess up the ordering, so you'll have to the sorting after that.

var uniqueColors =                 (from dbo in database.MainTable                   where dbo.Property == true                   select dbo.Color.Name).Distinct().OrderBy(name=>name); 

Answer 2

var uniqueColors = (from dbo in database.MainTable                      where dbo.Property == true                     select dbo.Color.Name).Distinct();