I always think that about these polls, not that it stops me from voting! I've only used 3 distros, but I can still form an opinion about others from looking at the reviews. Like Slackware: no Gnome, no Evolution, no Gnucash, no OpenOffice ... no thanks.

It is Freedom of choice, that's why I have tried all the major Distro releases the past year and always stick with Slackware.

Some distros the end user can MAKE it work the way they want without all kinds of other crap having to be installed. Other distro developers think they know better than the end user, what they need or don't need......making it a major PITA to get some things to work the way END USER wants.

KISS

Well, quite frankly, I couldn't find FreeBSD, so I had to vote "Ubombtu".

Oh, and you can stop calling me a nOOb, already. Not everyone who uses Ubuntu, or doesn't run Slackware for that matter, is a newbie. Just thought you should know.

Cheers

I like opensuse, For my educational purpose it is working very nice. I had also Tried ubuntu,fedora, redhat,mandriva. Opensuse is my choice

I ran most of the ones posted, and of course, I am using the best one, why else would I be using the others ? If you haven't tried most of them, then try them before voting.

I've used prior versions of Mandriva before, but this year the 2010 version has been the most hassle free desktop I've ever used. I installed the Free version with XFCE 4.6.

OpenSUSE 11.2 didn't work for me as well as the 11.1 version, but was pretty good.

I couldn't possibly single out one as best, TM. I've tried loads. I reckon 2009 is the year Linux finally arrived in a form non-nerds like myself can work with.

The best I've come across this year I would say are:

Mint 7.00 - Biggest plus: fabulous out-of-the-box instant usability with no messing about). Loads of useful software on the DVD· Biggest drawback: based on Ubuntu so no root maintenance account.

PCLinuxOS - Great out-of-the-box distro; everything works great; easy to configure security/firewall. Downside (probably since been fixed, but one could mount a volume read-only and it would still get written-to)

OpenBSD - Nicely finished; everything works. Downside: unfamiliar terminology and limited range of applications

OpenSolaris - Another almost perfect out-of-the-box distro. Some neat unique features like the amazing Time Slider and nifty package management are useful to have. Downside: some terminology differs to regular Linux distros.

Fedora 12.00. They finally got everything right!

Mepis is also deserving of a highly honorable mention.

slackware

Debian also gets the nod on Desktop side when I need something lighter weight for aging hardware, e.g. a couple workstations for the kids. I want to set these up and forget about them because I have lots better things to do with my time. Rock solid stable and piece of cake updates.

I personally use OpenSolaris, however, because ZFS rocks. Once you grok it and use if for a bit you're going to be spoiled and have a tough time returning to the "old school" file systems. Also CIFS, wh/gives interoperability with the dreaded MS in mixed environments w/o having to hassle the dreaded Samba. But this is Linux distro of the year so I'll stop spouting off about OpenSolaris and end by suggesting it's worth checking out if your hardware supports it and you can get by with presently rather slim pickings in the 3rd party apps department.

P.S.; CompletelyClueless a couple posts above, in case you're unaware, OpenBSD and OpenSolaris are both Unix, not Linux.

Really? Oh well thanks for the info.
BTW, what's so great about ZFS? What makes it superior to ext3/ext4? As a fairly typical non-nerd user, I find the filesystem flavor (as distinct from the directory structure) to be entirely opaque and not something I need to know about. Clue me up, please.

ZFS is more than just a filesystem. It is volume management as well. It provides the ability to couple together lots of drives of varying sizes and make a single filesystem out of it. It also gives you the ability to add disks at a later date and not have to reformat your raid in order to add the storage size.

You can read about the benefits of ZFS here.

HTH

Forrest

p.s. I use Fedora but voted for Ubuntu because it is "Wife Friendly(tm)"!

Hmmmmm... Best distro? Using what as a measure? Dev apps? User friendliness? Package management?

Personally, I believe that now, with the shift in Windows, Linux needs to be able to attract the masses. The two main distros that can do this are Ubuntu and Linux Mint. I voted for Linux Mint because it works on all my hardware (4 laptops, 5 desktops) OOTB. My wife and 9 yr old can install, use and maintain Mint by themselves. After a Mint install, they can do anything they want on the computer without installing any additional packages (except for the NVIDIA drivers).

I have used Slack for 10 yrs and Arch for a long time, but I use Mint as my main desktop because it just works. We need to attract new users and Mint is a great way to do it.

It is the Male species on this planet that like to compete with each other. My car is faster than your. My PC is faster than yours. etc, Ad nauseam

I use Mint 7 Gnome. Works for me.

Rich

What no Linux from Scratch. Tho I would agree its not technically a distribution.

I agree Mint is God's gift for emigrating Windows users, but I still can't reconcile myself to the fact that it suffers from Ubunutu's lack of a Root account for maintentance.