...but with the following caveat: Just as your tastes change for food over the years, your preference for linux flavors will change as well.
I personally use mainline distributions Redhat and SuSE in production, for demonstrations I use Morphix(based on Debian). I've messed around a bit in college with slackware and caldera(yuck! Everybody scream "I HATE SCO!"). I'm planning an excursion into Mandrake one day and eventually my database servers will all run BSD/PostgreSQL, but SuSE covers the United Linux front nicely and integrates with Novell as well, which is quite helpful. RedHat has helped so many people with the rpm build process and tends to cut down on administrative headaches and maintaining your software, that most other mainline distros offer at least some similar kind of package manager with online updates. Lately there has been some concern about pricing for an update channel, which is why the fedora project was started. Fedora is free as in speech, free as in beer and sponsored by redhat.
It's all going to depend on what you want out of your computer. Each distro offers something a bit different than the next. If you want to set up a router/firewall, Turbolinux has a solid rep. If you're looking for an easy desktop/workstation, SuSE or Mandrake are fairly easy to get going, although a bit different in their approaches to package management. Debian is known for its rock solid stability. Something else you want to consider: Build your system and software for what you intend to use the machine for. If you're just surfing the web, it's one thing- if you're trying to serve Samba over the web(!=good), it's another thing entirely. If you aren't sure what the software does, even after you read the release notes, don't install it unless your package manager tells you otherwise.
Quote:
Originally Posted by atvkid1090
hey all,
i've heard that linux is open source, meaning that people can go into the source code and edit it for stability, performance, etc. i was wondering if any of you know of the best one, and if you do, can you drop me a link to it? i'm just looking for another os that's free. thanks
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