EggXpert

I was just wondering what everyone's favorite Linux Distribution was.  Personally, I like Linux Mint, but I am really excited to try elive (enlightment window manager).  I had made a post about it before but never could get it to work with my graphics card :(  I hope to try it now, though!

Please refer to this sticky'd thread Choosing a Linux Distribution for all distro questions.

I would have to say my favorite distribution of linux is SLAX, Its a live distribution of Slackware which i did use for a little while in college.  I liked SLAX because I did not have to fight any linux install and I used it on my 300mhz emachine with 512 megs of ram when the HDD crashed and it ran FAST.  We only used it for typing up documents and surfing the net and it worked great for that.  Plus you could leave it on all the time and never have to reboot for anything.

I did like using Fedora as well.  I never used it for my main OS but it was what I used in Linux OS class in school and it was pretty nice.

Xubuntu if I want a nice blend of stability and features, with very little cruft.  Gentoo for any machine where I want (or need) up-to-the-second, bleeding edge stuff.  Sabayon (Gentoo-based) if I want all the latest graphical "cruft".

So... Xubuntu is what I use most of the time.

My favorite UNIX like OS is FreeBSD. I like FreeBSD because they build & maintain the entire OS from the kernel to the userland. It isn't broken in half like linux is, technically linux is just a kernel, and the distro is a set of of apps (many of them 3rd party) that uses the linux kernel.

I'm also a fan of all the linux distributions that have been around for the past 10 years, in particular: suse, redhat, slackware, and debian.

I like any linux distro that doesn't install a load of bloatware.

I always thought the idea of using linux is to learn the UNIX operating system. It is no replacement for Windows for the average desktop user, not yet atleast, after 10 years of using UNIX, XWin still sucks.

Instead of distro hopping, you should pick one, and learn to configure and tweak it to your liking and gain a better understanding of the UNIX OS. If you're not doing that, you might as well be using windows.

here's a project for the newbies:

install linux with bare minimum packages, no XWin, just the base files.

download and compile XWin and then run the setup utility.

learn how to configure, customize and compile a kernel.

secure your system. edit the startup scripts to only load the programs and services you need on bootup.
 

dhthwy:

here's a project for the newbies:

install linux with bare minimum packages, no XWin, just the base files.

download and compile XWin and then run the setup utility.

learn how to configure, customize and compile a kernel.

secure your system. edit the startup scripts to only load the programs and services you need on bootup.  

If I understood what I was doing so well in Linux, I'd probably do so.  Seems no matter what solutions I try, I still don't have much of an understanding of what I'm doing.  I run Ubuntu on my PC.  Does great for web stuff.  I really like Evolution as an email client.  I don't do much else in it because I don't know how much of anything works.   I do like the stability though.  Much better than Windows.  Though I will likely do a dual boot of XP and Ubuntu so I can play my games again.

To make sure I'm kinda staying on topic here, I'd have to label Ubuntu as fav distro.  Tried Ark and Gentoo as well.  That didn't last long.  I do keep a copy of Knoppix handy most of the time. 

dhthwy:

here's a project for the newbies:

install linux with bare minimum packages, no XWin, just the base files.

download and compile XWin and then run the setup utility.

learn how to configure, customize and compile a kernel.

secure your system. edit the startup scripts to only load the programs and services you need on bootup.

 www.linuxfromscratch.org.

Great source for learning material.  That's how I learned linux, and its good just to read about how things work.

Just experimenting is good too, as long as your not afraid to break things

Can be frustrating sometimes, tho.  And very time-consuming.

I like the big and cushy versions like PCLinuxOS, Xandros (sorry) and Fedora.

For small and live CDs Knoppix and Puppy Linux are great 

---

I fold for my Grandmothers, my cousin Mike, Uncles Bob and Carl, Aunt Barb, my wife's Grandmother, Aunts Linnea and Alma and Uncle Myrel who all died from Cancer and my dad who has survived

heh I don't know. I think it's a complete distribution but I have no idea if it's active anymore.

I was being sarcastic actually....  

As far as experimenting for those that get worried about hosing a system check out this link in the ubuntu forums about backing up and restoring a system. Since a linux system itself is usually not that large it pretty easy to make a backup anytime you want to start experimenting and then you can go back to the restore even if you hose up most of the system.

Oh, and my fav is Ultimate Edition, based off ubuntu but has a lot of the legally questionable stuff ubuntu takes out. 

ralyon 

mint linux based off of ubuntu gutsy 7.10 is by far the best out there.

 It looks amazing and has all codecs, and plugins installed already.

I've used a few different distros although I didn't understand Linux well enough to comment on the random ones I had before (like Mepis and even Lindows lol). But now I'm straight Ubuntu; I'm a strong advocate and really enjoy the O/S due to it's increasingly higher performance with each and every update. I downloaded 8.04 almost the minute it was available (I kid you not, I waited :-)) and downloaded many versions (AMD64/i386) a couple times just because I like seeing my 3MB/s downloads :-).

But it's an improvement in the right direction. Each new release is a big step forward although next time if they want to get a more mainstream and less advanced audience solely, it needs to be more graphically appealing, glitzy and more GUI-based so I don't have to go into Terminal 29/30 times for issues :-). 

The only reason my understanding for ubuntu has increased significantly is thanks to ubuntu's wonderful forums. I have only posted a couple times and not recently, but almost all if not all of my problems I have found through search there.

Slmclarengt

I just had to rebuild my Debian server, I was having issues with Azureus. I first tried Ubuntu Server 64bit edition with fluxbox. I really liked it but couldn't get azureus to work. Decided to try Ubuntu Studio 64bit edition. Very clean and I like it as well but still same issue. After a lot of googling, I figured out the problem (stupid java-7-icedtea) and got it all working. Now I'm just using studio version because I'm too lazy to switch back to fluxbox.

http://ubuntustudio.org/

On my main desktop I'm using Mint:

http://linuxmint.com/

And I like that one as well. Version 5 is coming soon too, which rocks.