Choosing a best-fit distro
 

Hi all!
As a web developer and linux non-geek(I hope someday I'll reach that :study:),I have a same-old-story simple question but for specific needs:
Which distro or distros can do efficiently the trick for me, as for:

Ease of installation and not many bugs included...
Wide hardware devices support
Nice GUI look and feel
Many application development tools(C,C++,PHP,Java,Ruby,Perl,Python)
Enough tools to study the inner workings of Linux(kernel development,packages development,drivers and so on)
Expandability

I know of course that there is not an "all-in-one" distro,but I am asking for some that can efficiently approximate the above demands.

So far I have some experience with Red Hat (good enough), openSUSE (very good), but as it is obvious from the above demands, I need some distro that is more specific to development(web&applications),stable enough and expandable.
Thanks in advance!

Search These Forums and Try Live CDs
 

There are a lot of good posts about this in these forums. I suggest going off and reading those.

Also, I'd download a lot of live CDs, and try them.

BTW, we use Red Hat because of vendor and disaster recovery compatability reasons (as many systems as possible running the same distro/level of OS), and I use Kubuntu for my workstation and test systems.

First, accept that none is "best," and that it's an insult to suggest that one is. If one was best, we'd all use it, and there wouldn't be hundreds to choose from.

http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=major

Choosing a best-fit distro
 

Thanks for you reply cmnorton.As I mentioned in my post,I've already used Red Hat(specifically full 9 version bought),back in 2004.It had a lot of good features.I've tried openSuse 11.1,but it seems to have various problems after installation(I've tried twice to install it).Now I'm looking for sth more stable and I'll go perhaps for openSuse 10.x version that is already very well tested,or Kubuntu.

Thanks for your reply rickh,too.Of course I've done and I'm doing a lot of search and try different distros.My initial post was not aimed at having someone to do the search for me;after all this could be silly for a developer. I simply want to have some more experienced opinions at hand about distros than mine,in order to make my mind better.And I absolutely agree to the fact that it would be an insult,to name x or y distro as best.But some distros are more technically oriented regarding user and other are aiming to be easy to use and make no real difference from Windows.

Hi,

As stated you should try out some Livecds. You can look at 'The LiveCD List' to get an idea.

Or look at the 'Download Linux' link here on LQ.

These links and others can be found at 'Slackware-Links'. More than just Slackware® links!

Download the Gentoo Minimun install disc. Optimization is best with a distro that is completed compiled from source.