Add a "Which distrobution is best" forum?

Do you think the people who post this question will bother to look that carefully at which forum to post it too? I doubt it.

Most responses have not read the question - "Which distro is best for me". It is the "for me" bit that makes it worth considering.

Different people have different needs. For some, ripping DVDs and connecting to weird hardware is vital, others just want to surf and do some light word-processing. Some people are born techies and want to get their hands dirty, others are looking for a zero-hassle alternative to MS and won't touch the command line.

When people ask "which is best?" they generally mean "for me". I feel it is worth keeping a sub-forum going as the answers will keep changing over time. Reviews often don't help, too many of them are three-quarters about the installer, not the installed distro.

It can take a lot of research, and a few false starts, to work out which is really the one to go for, so if people can ask the question, including what they want it for and their level of technical interest and expertise, it may save others from getting into something inappropriate.

Originally Posted by jeremy This really isn't the kind of narrow topic that we'd create an entire forum for here at LQ. Thanks for the feedback. --jeremy

With all due respect, I think volume of replies is a more important criterion than than narrowness of the topic.

Originally Posted by billymayday Do you think the people who post this question will bother to look that carefully at which forum to post it too? I doubt it.

I doubt it too, but it doesn't matter because the moderators can (& do) easily move posts/threads to the correct forum.

Originally Posted by archtoad6 With all due respect, I think volume of replies is a more important criterion than than narrowness of the topic.

We have a couple of threads in General on porting programs to Linux and on screenshots, would they need a forum? Thing is, all this would give us is a dumping ground. Every single thread would be the same, every answer would be the same. I tried to megathread it but gave up in the end, despite having a place to put the question new threads sprang up left, right and centre.

Originally Posted by archtoad6 I doubt it too, but it doesn't matter because the moderators can (& do) easily move posts/threads to the correct forum.

Gee, thanks. Yes, we could spend a few hours a day moving the most popular and duplicated threads to a new home, or we could just leave them where they are - Linux-Newbie and Linux-Distributions would seem to be, by far, the best place for the questions.

I can see why it is an attractive idea: all threads on one very specific subject could be in one place and, if we make the assumption that reading and searching happens, then we would never see another thread about it. And there's the next problem: we would have a forum that is read by everyone and where there are little to no new threads or answers. At that point, there will be a call to close it and then after a while there will be a call to open one.

I do not think this would work and it would just be a forum full of noise.