This one is easy:


LFS.

Users of LFS and Gentoo must have a lot of spare time I am tempted to install Gentoo coz I tried out Vidalinux and found it to be an okay distro.

Come to that, users of Linux must have a lot of spare time

Gentoo is not time consuming. You just type in the command then go to bed. Most are done when you wake up, if you have a pretty descent rig. Mine ain't the most speedy thing in the world but it doesn't take that long. The install while harder than most is well worth the ease of installing afterward. emerge sync, the emerge <name of program>, then go to sleep. That with broadband, which I wish I had, means it is done when you get up. Do a little configuring and you are done.

As for stability:

That is the longest for me yet. Mandrake could not even get close to that. Random lockups for some reason.

A little effort equals a great payoff. I have done installs via ssh. I done two in Sweden, me at home in USA, and one in Michigan. They are not that bad if you are familiar with Linux a bit.

My $.02 worth.

Later

Recently tried Gentoo (on a PII 400Mhz laptop, do not repeat NOT emerge gnome unless you mind waiting > 20hrs )
I was very much impressed. Great documentation, great community, easy configuration, easy update, I even liked the installation (IMHO not for beginners though)...impressed enough to vote for it.

Mandrake or Gentoo.... Gentoo this time around.

Quote:

LFS, Slack a good second and knoppix for rescues.

+1 for this result

Oliv'

This year debian. Tried gentoo but couldn't get a stage1 install so the fun was gone. Might try slack and freebsd later.

w00t all for debian!!!

This year's distro is tough; but this year's newcomer is definately Ubuntu.
The results one can get with VectorLinux are simply impressive.

This is soooo hard.. 2004 has been one of the most influential years as far as my life and computers go... I started with linux in late October of 2003, but never even registered here until April of this year...

I have used a very wide variety of distros, from starting with RH9 and moving on to SuSE9.0, FreeBSD 5.1, Debian, and tons of others..

I voted for Slackware.. I was always scared to move to slackware because everyone talked about how difficult it is... I don't think that's true at all.. I found it to very simplistic and stable, which I believe is the basis behind the whole distro.. I think it could use a good package updater that is NOT 3rd party, as I have heard nothing but bad things about the 3rd party Slack updaters.. so I just do it by hand... not a big deal...

Close to this was SuSE for me... SuSE 9.0 was the second distro I tried, purchasing the Professional box from Best Buy.. I really liked it and found it easy to use, and easy to move to from a Windows point of view... I really liked 9.1 Pro also... I haven't gotten 9.2 yet, but I have heard mixed reviews about it..

I think Fedora has done a great job throughout the year...I love the cutting edge software aspect of it.. but I think it's low support life takes away from it a lot...

Gah! I'm still a big fan of SuSE, even if they did go commercial.

Gentoo and Mandrake.

Load Mandrake because it's fast. Then build Gentoo in a chrooted environment in the background, best of both worlds.

I'm torn here, Gentoo is currently my distro of choice, but if I am trying to make a "convert" I always say Mandrake, though PClinuxOS looks as if it could be useful (if I ever get to install it properly).

OK I will vote for Mandrake, because I think it is a nice compromise between ease of use and installation whilst being a "real" linux and not a Windows clone.

You should have tried KDE. It is a big compile project. Only one bigger is Open Office, the full version which I have on mine. It takes a long time even on this rig to compile.

I did start with Mandrake though. I got tired of the dependancy problems though. Gentoo solved all that though.

Later

Fedora all the way! Though ubuntu is just as good.