ok, if you were to put all in all, set money aside, and based on quality, (for a home desktop, and for someone who wants to program) what is the best linucx operating system, the least errors, plays dvds, etc. easy enough question. also, it would be nice if wasnear simple for a noob, someone who has had some experiance with linux, (fedora core 8)

My first response is Slackware.

My second response is PCLinuxOS.

My third is whichever one you try and like the most, and that works well with your hardware.

The first two are the ones that I have had good success with. PCLinuxOS was good for all the multimedia purposes, but particular distros are not necessarily better at certain things than others. Some people might say "Slackware|RedHat|blahblahblah is a server distro, and Ubuntu is a desktop distro." Not necessarily true. Try out a bunch, see which ones you like.

I think it comes down to administration more than anything else: do you want a package manager like apt-get, yum or yast to take care of things for you? Or do you want to deal with packages the way Slackware deals with them (I prefer it the Slackware way, with no dependency checking).

Most of them include the same software at the core; the biggest differences are in what application suites are included with which desktop. I have certainly preferred KDE, but that is primarily because Ubuntu is the only GNOME-favoring distro I've tried, and it didn't work with my hardware at the time.

Try em out as Live CDs and see what you like.

Joel

thanks.

now, whch is prefered by most ppl, slackware or PClinuxOS?

Does it matter, I mean really? Find out which is preferred for you..

They are very very different systems in the way they approach things. PCLinuxOS has a package manager, automatic dependency management and a large set of repositories. Slackware is far more bare bones and requires you to do a lot of hand configuring and chasing dependencies yourself.

Both are stable (I would say Slackware is the most stable of the two, but that's based on my experiences only). In the end, it really is down to what you like and dislike. My preference is Slackware, but other people like other distros.

Try them both, there is no right or wrong answer, only what is right for you.

links to DVD torrent download for both?

im a noob to linux, not very good with manual updating or configuring, that being said, whch seems best for me?

im thinking PClinuxOS, is trhe newest stable version PClinuxOS 2008?

http://www.google.com

I would suggest starting with Ubuntu. It is the most popular Linux distribution and the most user friendly. I am a huge advocate of Slackware, but I think it's possible for it to put newbies off of Linux. Start with Ubuntu and get comfortable using Linux, then you can try other distributions.

http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=ubuntu

Ubuntu better than PClinuxOS ??

*Bangs head on table*. We can't tell you which you'll find "better".

Look, use Google to do some research, and then get to installing one of them! I'd say they are both user friendly enough for you.

*hands Nylex an ice pack*

haha, im just wondering, because im using fedora and im unimpressed, hey Nylex, which one is better for me haha jk

FWIW, I just installed Kubuntu 8.04, and I couldn't stand it. I know I'm old and my eyes are failing, but I nearly got a headache before I could get to the RESTART button so I could boot back into 6.06. I'll keep it as a dual-boot to see if it can be fixed, but the default fonts are painfully horrible for me.

The point of my post is that not only are the distros different, but you can find vast differences in each version, as well. You just need to try them until you find one that works.

Cheers