One favorite tool is always the one they use and are most familiar with. There's a lot of subjectivity on this subject. I like Ubuntu because it works, 6 month cycle, great company/man behind it and great community supporting it. I also like that Ubuntu has the deal with Dell. I was a Suse user until 10.1 when they desided to release a version that wasn't fit for alpha. I don't mind a bit of tweaking but that was almost criminal. Being on Ubuntu since 6.04RC I've seen every release improve and even get faster.

thanks... you all have been great for my guidence... I hope I didn't misspel that

Why is this poll accidently posted to Ubuntu...it should be placed in Mandriva as soon as possible.

cheers

In my opinion, the "best" distro is the next iteration of the one I currently use -- always.

Why? Because Linux is a dynamic and wonderful piece of work. The next one is always better.

What kind of person keeps adding comments to a thread like this???

EEK--I just added a comment!!!! I'm now one of them ......

Seriously, folks, this thread is really pointless.

Aw come on now. Since when is a fairly flame-free conversation ever pointless !!

I say read everybody's profile and see what distros their using...should give you an indication.

where's gentoo?

Tongue-in-cheek (where's the smiley for that?) answer w/ more than a grain of truth:

Quit your job, sell your house, & move to Houston (tx usa). Join HAL-PC & HLUG, attend my Wednesday Linux Workshop, suck up to me enough that I will mentor you, & use MEPIS - 6, 6.5, or 7, your choice. If I don't like you, move to The Woodlands, repeat the process w/ Evan, & use Ubuntu. If that doesn't work, then you're off to Pasadena/South Houston to Russell & Debian/Gentoo/LFS.


My serious point here is that we tend to forget that direct, face-to-face human contact is still important even in the age of the 'Net. If you're lucky enough to have a local LUG, then join it. Then find a mentor -- someone you "click" w/ -- & use whatever s/he uses until you know enough to make an informed different choice.

I've been on both sides of this & it works.
(OT: FWIW, it works for skydiving too. )

CentOS! You get the compatibility from Redhat and the ease of use (package management) from the other distros, while at the same time not being a totally daft OS like eg Ubuntu, OSX etc.

Debian is the big winner !

Stable for production boxes, and Testing for leisure boxes... Even Sid for the adventurous

It runs on most architecture, it is truly the universal OS

I think this has pretty much run it's course. For every distro there is at least one person running it. Add to which, you have a multiple choice poll - you want everyone to pick the one best distro but you make choosing all of them legitimate.

There is no best. The best is the one you are happiest using. For an "official" take on it, head over to the member awards forum and see the poll results there.