Which is the best Linux distro??

I have gotten my hands on another pc, which is pretty old but capable of runnin Linux.

But I dont know what Linux to chuck on it.

I was thinkin of these to put on it, Slackware, Red Hat, SuSE, LFS, Mandrake.

What do u people think, I want a bit of a challange not to much coz i am a N00B but a little challange is always needed

if u picked others in the poll please post what that distro was

My vote vent for Mandrake.

Allmost every uber-Linux user around here praises Slackware, and I certainly cant understand why.
My experiments with Slackware were everything but nice. Don't know what was wrong, but it couldn't mount my floppy nor CD, and I'm sure I needed bare.i kernel, so wtf?

OS is meant basically for everyday use, not everyday hacking. And that is area where Mandrake excels alongside SOT Linux.
That was just my 2 €-cents, and I use Linux just for programming (free devices for that) and sound editing (again free programs).

If you want a little challenge - go slack or debian. More challenge:lfs

my favorite is slackware or debian. the other ones do too much for you. i tried suse 8 pro a couple days ago and during the installation process, you can take a nap and it will fully configure your system for you. thats how mdk and rh are too. i was logged in as a regular user and i wanted to access a file w/o the proper permissions and it chmoded the file for me so i wouldnt have to login as root and do it. slackware and debian also allow you to work closer to the hardware. if you couldnt mount your optical and floppy drives, maybe you needed to go back and edit /etc/fstab and make sure that everything is correct.

ry_Den

I personally like Mandrake. I'm using 8.2.

One area where it is a little buggy is in terms of reinstalling stuff that "goes bad". Where it needs more beef is in the utilities department. What is really needed is a tool for backing up and restoring settings once the machine suffers some sort of crash. I recently had an X-server crash that wiped out my kdm set-up. I still haven't gotten it back, and so am using gdm which I don't like as much. There should be a utility that is installed by default that backs-up vital settings like the XF86Config and ~-4 files, the kdm/xdm/gdm login manager files, and some other vital processes.

But in terms of user friendly set-ups, its very good. It's easy for a newbie to set up a Linux box with Mandrake. If they can get around halfway decently in Windoze, then they are 1/2 way there with Mandrake.

I had tried SuSE about 4 years back. Didn't like it. It was too cryptic in terms of setup. They were using the original YAST at that time and it was very hard to figure out what you were doing. There was little to no help in setting up X-Windows or any of the window managers. It was a problem setting up a graphical login... I'm sure it's improved since then, but I still prefer Mandrake for its ease of use and availability of the Distros.

In terms of distros, I think SuSE is more for networking types. Mandrake is more for home/workstation users. Red Hat is more for corporate users, and the other distros fill other niches.

The best one is when you create a system for yourself and configure it in detail. It can be based on a distro, but it requires a lot of work.
If you don't have time for this, the best choice is Mandrake, but Slack is near.

Yes I think I will build a distro around the PC that I am goin to use, thats a very good idea and should give me alot of expierience, I have alot of time to waste sometimes, and its a spare computer anyways so I still have a fully workin one aswell as that one.

mandrake 8.2

you know this gets asked a LOT around here, and no one ever bothers to search..... persoanlly i find it a little offending that people just can't be bothered to look at one of the dozens of older polls

heheh, I couldn't agree more with him...since the last poll with this same question was done by me like some weeks ago...But I guess everyone likes to have their own posted poll?,


zLinuxz

yeah I know, I think I did one similar, only it was browser. But I don't mind contributing to the same poll over and over, things change, new distros arrive, and tastes change.

Not mine though, Mandrake since 7.2 and still voting with 8.2. Go Mandy!

actuallly, yellow dog, which is redhat based

Well if you think about it, if everybody just did a search and did not post there own polls we would never get any new feedback. A new user to this forum is not going to know about the old polls and when a new one is listed they can voice there opinion.

And mine in RedHat.

I think for the buisiness user RedHat is the way to go. The RedHat network offers some sweet stuff that makes the life of a sysadmin so much easier. Plus they have RPM's for almost everything you want so you wont have to start off in the linux world trying to compile your own software.

I have used Mandrake, Slackware, Turbo, and Redhat.

I first tried redhat and hated it. I gave them a couple years and now played with 7.2 and am very impressed. I just suggest that you dont install everything but rather almost nothing so you can put the packages you want on, forcing you to learn them and allowing you not to be overwhelmed. I also suggest looking at something like this http://www.redhat.com/software/linux/pl_rhl.html for whatever distro you use. There is alot of stuff out there and the first thing to win this battle is to know what the hell it is .

Road

My this questions is beaten to death, but I guess it should be re-hashed every few months or so to stay afloat of the current versions.

I prefer Slackware because I like to tinker, and it loves to let me. Aside from that, its a bit slimmer than the others in the ammount of resources it pigs up, even with the spankin' new 8.1.

Offhand, there are a lot of Debian users here, more on the planet than Slackware users actually, probably should have given them a bar.

Cheers,

Finegan