We're thinking about doing some Linux vs. Windows testing for a specific app to see if it runs faster on one than the other. For Linux, which flavor would be good for a business environment? I'm fond of Gentoo but am worried about using it in this kind of environment. I'm thinking of using Debian but heard it's a bit behind.

Please advise. Thanks.

if you are a novell shop then suse might be a good choice

We're a Microsoft mainly. This is a new beachhead. Let's make a good impression

yea, I think you are right to avoid gentoo for this type of situation and I would stay away from mandrake also since I have heard a lot of angry tales about it and lived one of my own.

We run SuSe here and between yast for system management and auto updates and the painless installation and configuration, its pretty slick. I said it would be a good chioce if you were a novell shop since novell has purchased suse (last year) and there are some novell integrated versions available. That being said I am pretty sure you can still buy non-novell suse and even in the releases that are integrated with novell I think they are just addiitional features which you could use or not use

Keep in mind i havent used redhat since probably 7.0 so am sure it, and some other distros, have matured like suse.

Try out RedHat or it's free alternative CentOS or Fedora Core.

Boby

The reason I wanted Gentoo was because it was so light weight. I want to know exactly what's going to be in this new box and what's happening, etc. Redhat from my experience is the opposite of that.

a lot of non-gentoo distros are the opposite of that.

But as you said, making a good impression is the most important thing this first time around, and a more windows-like (Bloated) distro that is super user friendly and comes with lots of crap is going to accomplish just that.