Okay, I am about to enter Jan term at my college, I believe the class I am taking for that month-long term will not consume much of my time. So, to eat up some of my free time, I am thinking about testing out some distributions that I haven't looked at before. I have used recent versions of Mandrake, SuSE, and Knoppix. I am going to try to look at about 4-5 distros over January. I am definitely going to look at Debian. I've used older versions of RH, but I don't think I will find anything groundbreaking there, so I'm planning on staying away from it.

Any suggestions on what else I should look at? I am a computer science major that uses Linux to write code under and do everything except play games that require Windows. I would say I'm an intermediate level user.

Thanks!

Have you browsed Distrowatch??

Yeah, I have a few ideas from Distrowatch, but I also wanted some input from people here since a lot of you are quite knowledgable.

Try Gentoo, Slackware, Sorcerer, Lunar, Vector and maybe Source Mage.

Slackware - because it is possibly the "purest" Linux distro... whatever that means
Arch - because it is similar to Slackware in its streamlined simplicity but has decent package management system as well. Also notable for its dual nature - can use binary packages with Pacman or build from source (similar to gentoo's portage) with abs.
At least one of source based distros... Sorcerer might well be most advanced in some concepts, but has small user base. Source Mage and Lunar are similar - but Source Mage community is more active and friendly than Lunar. Gentoo... well, everyone and their dog is using Gentoo already
For ultimate kick build your own distro with LFS (linux from scratch)

These are probably the more obvious ones. Some lesser known possibilities:

Gobo Linux - interesting for attempting to break with traditional Unix directory hierarchy..To quote from their FAQ: "Basically, this means that there are no directories such as /usr and /etc. The main idea of the alternative hierarchy is to store all files belonging to an application in its own separate subtree"
Onebase Linux - it could be an interesting new source based distro, if it manages to achieve critical mass. New version should become available in a couple of weeks... might be worth checking out.

email me for a free copy of gentoo wayne@linuxmall.us

Or you could just go to the Gentoo website and get a free download of it.

Zerodark that is true you can download gentoo. Ii am just trying to promote my web site. It is not finish yet, but it will be soon. I am giving away free cds or a $10 credit on any new hardware, for info on how i can improve my site.