Help Required for Choosing the best Linux OS
 

Hello to everyone.

I would like to know if anyone has any suggestions towards the best OS I can run. I am relatively new to Linux, so my knowledge is extremely limited. I would like some feedback and/or experiences from people that have used/installed what I am going to present. I don't care so much about ease of use; I would prefer a faster, lighter, more efficient OS to an "easy" one.

First of all: it's going to be installed on a Dell Laptop, i-7 4500U @ 1.8GHz 2.40 GHz, 8GB AM, AMD Radeon HD 8850M.

Secondly: I will install and use the following:
Broadband Platform (whatever is listed in here): https://scec.usc.edu/scecpedia/Broadband_Platform
SAC: https://ds.iris.edu/ds/nodes/dmc/sof...downloads/sac/
Dreger's Green's Functions (the mtpackage program): ftp://www.orfeus-eu.org/pub/software/iaspei2003/ (please note that this is an old program and I had some trouble installing it on Fedora 14).

Last but not least: It's going to be used strictly for research purposes, which means that some programs (mainly from the BBP) will require quite some time to run.

Any and all suggestions are kindly welcome. Thank you in advance for your help!

on 8 gb of ram you can install pretty anything, but seems like ubuntu will take much of resurces provided, so it may be best choice.

It sounds like this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_Linux from FermiLab/CERN may be worth a look eg
so you'll probably be able to find others who are trying to accomplish the same/similar tasks.

HTH

Check out distrowatch.com for your options.

http://distrowatch.com/

There is no "best" Linux distribution, though some are much better than others. and a few are--er--less than optimal. Frankly, any of the major distros should work. Note, too, that the primary superficial difference among distros is not what's underneath, but the GUI interface. Other than that, the primary differences are the package management and init systems (SystemD is rapidly becoming dominant; others include SysV and BSD-style init scripts).

I suggest that you narrow your choices down to four or five distros, then burn Live CDs of the ones you find most interesting and test them in live mode, then pick the one that makes the best impression on you.

RHEL 6

a lot Univ. software is built for rhel6

i use ScientIficLinux6.7 to run ISIS3 ( USGS/JPL/NASA) and Stereopipeline ( AMES/NASA)

so for "The SCEC Broadband Platform is a software system"
i would use SL6

Check the AMD support before you install, you might also want check bumblebee support

Looking at the software you want, I note that Broadband Platform's dependencies are met in CentOS (or Scientific Linux) but not Ubuntu. SAC looks as if it would run on anything. As for TDMT, you can but try! I'd say go for Scientific Linux
https://www.scientificlinux.org/
and pick version 6 rather than 7, since TDMT is old. Actually, you can still use version 5, which is supported for 2 more years.

I sincerely thank everyone for the answers provided.
I think I will give SL6 a try.