Linux distros

[rory_20_uk]

Soon I am going to install Linux on my PC (I'm even considering getting another disk drive just in case my luck with Linux continues...)

I am constantly umming and aahing over which one to plump for, and was wondering if anyone here has any advice.

[Geezer57]

I'm in the midst of the same dillemma, so hopefully some good info will come along soon.

[Bouchious]

I used OpenSUSE linux for a while as an interim setup. Linux as a whole is stable and fast, OpenSUSE was useful to me as it did what I wanted, networking was hassle free and I even go a little router system setup going after a while.

I can't trully evaluate the OS but all I can say is Good Luck¬

[Blodrast]

I guess it would be fair to say that some of the major players are debian (or ubuntu), fedora core, and suse.

I haven't had any personal experience with suse, so I can't comment on that.
I've always felt it was a bit over-bloated for a linux distro, though.

debian/ubuntu have the advantage that they probably sport the easiest package update/install/uninstall system (apt). apt seems (to me) the highlight of these distros.

fedora core has yum (the equivalent of apt), but I personally have had a few stability issues with it. Maybe it matured more lately, last significant experience I had with it was in FC3.
Another problem that FC used to have (don't know if it still does) is upgrading from FCx to FCy (y > x). That was absolutely impossible to do up until FC4 or such. Don't know if it's better now.

One of the downsides of debian/ubuntu is that it's a bit of a pain to install it - awfully unfriendly, and it might make you feel a bit lost during the process.

Anyway, you should give a bit of thought to what exactly are you gonna use your linux box for ? Will you care about upgrading packages very often ? Will you care about migrating to a new distro (e.g., FCx to FCx+1), or will you rather just install the new one from scratch ?
Are you only concerned with a friendly installation process ?
Depending on how you feel about these, some of the points I made above may have more or less importance to you.

hope this helps.

[Xiahou]

I use and like Mandrake10 with KDE. Although, my distro is a few versions behind (it's now called Mandriva). It's running on a system that's 7yrs old (700mhz Athlon), but acts as an NT4 PDC, a print server, network storage, and a webserver, but can still run some games like Enemy Territory at a decent framerate.