OT: "Best" Linux Distro?

On 01/12/05, Cini, Richard <Richard.Cini at wachovia.com> wrote: Time for my usual 5min instant distro summary. I'm going to make some assumptions: - you want a GUI desktop machine - you want some basic productivity apps & Internet clients - you have a reasonably modern x86 PC that would run W2K or XP happily You have some choices to make. Do you mind paying for it? Do you want to play around, fiddle, try different things out, or do you want it to just work so you can get on with using your computer? If you don't mind paying, then: - for a do-everything loads-of-toys distro, try Mandriva or SuSE. Both are very complete, easy GUI-based distros with good admin tools. - for a simple Windows-replacement, try Xandros. If you don't want to pay, or are happy to put up with a slightly limited free eval version, then: - for the do-everything types, again, Mandriva or SuSE - for a simple quick clean GUI desktop, try Ubuntu. Small, fast, does the job. Based on Debian so you can hack around with it if you so choose, changing desktop environments, window managers, whatever you like. That covers it. Other contenders: - for all-in-one GUI solutions, there's also Mepis, which some people really rate. - if you don't mind running something that is essentially in eternal beta-test and never stabilizes, Fedora Core is allegedly all right. Only Red Hat fans tend to like it. If you don't want a GUI desktop, but want to assemble your own OS from the pieces, then: - Slackware is the oldest currently-maintained distro. Nice simple BSD-style init, fairly minimal and thus fast, but setup and package management are a bit paleolithic. The package management is being modernised, though, but is still based around tarballs. If you don't know what a tarball is, you don't want Slackware. - Debian is arguably the One True Linux. Old, stable, reliable, the best package management around, massive library of software. You choose the edition: stable version (mission-critical boxes: changes very slowly, essential bugfixes only), unstable or testing (constantly shifting, where new stuff is tried out.) Needs configuring and building entirely by hand - expect to write lots of config files. Learning curve like the north face of the Eiger. - Gentoo. For the sort of person who glues a bodykit onto a small boring hatchback. Compile everything from scratch so you have the exact compiler optimisations for your individual machine. Can be very fast as a result. Requires considerable knowledge to get working. Anything else is, frankly, marginal, or costs thousands and is intended for corporate servers. Avoid Linspire: pretty, easy, but no security & no bundled apps; defaults to running as 'root' at all times, all apps & extras cost money. -- Liam Proven ? http://livejournal.com/userinfo.bml?user=lproven AOL/AIM/iChat: liamproven at aol.com ? MSN/Messenger: lproven at hotmail.com Yahoo: liamproven at yahoo.co.uk ? Skype: liamproven ? ICQ: 73187508 Gmail/Google Talk/Orkut: lproven at gmail.com