If you are more concerned about support and ofcourse ease to manage, I would recommend you to try Ubuntu. They have released a new version in June 2006. The name is Ubuntu 6.06 LTS where LTS stands for Long Term Support. They have a large community to provide support. This version will be supported for the next 5 years.
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For more information, visit their website
http://www.ubuntu.com/Welcome

[QUOTE=phil.d.g]As you have already found out: ask ten different people and you'll get ten different answers.


i know i will finaly stuck with one distro,

but i want to get idea of different users before i start installation, that would help me more, in here everyone speaks about thier favorite distro, i want to get more ideas of different users, and finaly i will pick one, as i said beforei have download like three iso,Debian,ubuntu,fedora,and i m downloading now the Mandrake v10.1 but i love to have distro and ofcourse one day i will start working with all of them, but now i wanna pick one and study about it for a while then i will start with others, and i want you guys to tell me which one should be my first choice thank you very much

Kabul

Mandrake 10.1 is old and probably not supported anymore, so I suggest you get Mandriva 2006 (Mandrake merged with Conectiva to create Mandriva). Ubuntu is derived from Debian, so they are quite similar. As a desktop OS, Ubuntu is ok, but if I was going to use Linux on an important server, I would just go for Debian Stable.

I guess you said that because, Ubuntu is based on Debian unstable. Or are they really different?

Yes, that the main reason why I would pick Debian instead of Ubuntu. Debian Stable undergoes more stability tests than most distros out there.

Hey Mandrake v10.1 i have downloaed already the 45%

i tried to download the mandriva 2006 the size of ISO is 674MB and the Mandrake is more than 2GB, why some of these ISO is more than 2gb or more like Debian is 4Gb i downloaded the 4gb and takes so much time

should i quit downloading the mandrake v10.1 and start with Mandrive 2006 so i can quickly download the mandrive

because it only 674MB and the mandrake 10.1 is 2Gb


Advise please

thanks alot

Mandriva isos are about 2 gigs. The free version of Mandriva is actually 1 dvd or 3 cds, so I guess you are downloading just one disc if you say its around 600 megs. You will need all 3 discs if you want to run a GUI. As to whether you should stop downloading Mandrake, I guess you could just finish downloading it, take it for a spin and then replace it with Mandriva whenever its convenient for you. You could also just quit the download and go straight for Mandriva 2006. Both are good options since you are just going to be trying them out and not yet using them for production.

[QUOTE=Kabul]
For a server I would recommend against Fedora. Fedora is RedHats Testing ground from new technologies. if you want something redhat based that is stable enough for a server check out CentOS. Fedora would be perfectly fine for a workstation, but a bad choice for a server imho...

Avoid ANY testing or experimental distros for server use..

For the same reason I run Debian Stable for my servers, it's rock solid and it works. but I would never consider using the testing or unstable branches of Debian for a server.. on the other hand I run the Debian unstable branch for my home workstation..

Server priorities are stability, uptime, security, and availability.