question. i am wondering which linux distribution to get. i want to know what is the best distro in terms of customizability and well, just has the most options. i don't care how hard it is because i am a fast learner.

moved to the distribution forum where all the other identical questions just like this one have gone and been answered...

there is no right answer to your question. any distro is highly customizable, all come with pretty much the same options as any other.. if you really want to learn Linux, go with either Slackware or Debian.

go with suse 8.1 or mandrake 9. red hat 8 has left some things out of it.

Uhhh what tricky said is if your real detirmined

and what ronns said is when your starting out...either way you could start with ronns idea then move to trickys, or you could start with tricky, then have ronns for fun...

Make sense? lol

#Garry

thanks for the imput. i think i might start out with slackware because i did some research and it looks like a good way to go. but i have one more question. should i buy it and if so where? or should i download it-i can probably find the download but will it be worth my time (i only have a 28.8 connection)? i already like this linux community and i don't even have linux yet!

If you buy it, your helping support it. Best place to buy is at http://store.slackware.com or you can download it from either www.slackware.com or maybe a site like www.linuxiso.org

But yeah, a 28.8 dialup might take you awhile. I do believe its $39.95 from Slackware, or maybe like www.cheapbytes.com or www.linuxmall.com has it for cheaper.

Which is the 'best distro' definitely depends on who you ask, so like trickykid says, that's a difficult questions to answer.

If you like a bit of a challenge but a rewarding experience, I say go with Slack 8.1. Once you get used to it, it's easier to use than the others, in my opinion. It seems to run faster on my machines, too.

The cheapest place I've found the CDs is Edmund's Discount Linux CDs. I buy the cheap CDs first so I can test the distro, then if I like the product, I buy the 'Official' package to help support the distribution.

What trickykid said about Cheapbytes having good prices is right, too. I think I only gave $20 for my Official 4-CD Slackware 8.1 package, and all I can say is, it was money well spent.

Arghhh - guess I need a keyboard with a spellchecker built into it...

With 28.8 the download time will take to the point where is the current version you are downloading becomes obsolete . Spend some cash and support the community, or if you are tight on cash and you are anywhere in the continential United States I can send you a copy of Slackware8.1, or any other popular distribution, just e-mail me your address.

Exercising the new Highspeed Internet eh Boris

Cool

The subject of the dest Linux distro can be a touchy one. I have played with all the major ones and some of the not-so-major ones as well, and decided......well, maybe a little history is in order here....

Started with RedHat 8.0 (I'm quite new to linux). It was cool and all, easy to configure. I loved Gnome and KDE (coming from years of using Windows). I learned a bit about linux, but not much. Switched to 9.0, but it was wayyyyy too slow on my old TP 600. Also, running the huge desktop environments did not help. So I went back to 8.0. It was better, but not much.

I wanted to tweak the performance of the 'puter and heard a lot of good things about Mandrake and pentium class machines. So I switched to Mandrake 9.0 and then quickly to 9.1. They were beautiful!! Sets up great, runs easily. I was very happy with it. My experience was that it ran better on my machine than RH. Also, experimented with the light WM's IceWM and than WindowMaker (a beautiful WM).

Then moved to Slackware 9.0, was horrified at how bad evrything looked and switched back to Mandrake. Did this several times. Since Slackware has no GUI configuration it was very difficult for me to figure out how to run things. After several rounds of switching back and forth, I stuck with Slackware, figured out how to configure everything (few days work in there). I now run it with Fluxbox as the WM and I have to say that it runs like a dream. Also, I learned a lot about how things work in Linux due to the effort I had to put in to configuring it.

I also tried SuSE and debian. SuSE was beautiful, but bloated like RH and Mandrake. Debian was a pain to configure (I was already used to Slackware).

If you have a fast machine and not much time (or inclination to figure things out) use Mandrake (especially on Pentium class machines). If you have a slower machine or want to learn a bit about your system I'd suggest Slackware.

Upshot of all this-------go for Slackware!!!!

fasmaie did you try gentoo?

What about Suse 9.0?

Suse supports less hardware than Gentoo, and is much shower to add new software.

# Linux Distribution links:
A Beginner's Guide to Choosing a Linux Distribution
Reasons to Choose or Not Choose Linux
LWN distro list
elinux Linux Distributions

Can I ask an administration question?

Why don't we close the "Best Linux Distro" threads? I think people would get the picture a lot quicker. I mean, nothing new ever comes out of them.