I chose what I use at the moment. It is very hard to say which one is the best because each distro or falvour tend to develope according to the solution the developers where trying to acheive. Like DSL for carrying around or Redhat for corporate use, etc. The reason I chose Debian was because it is very easy to set-up and use, without dumbing things down. And I am using dumbing in a positivive sense, as in to try and make things easier for users who are new to Linux. It has three sub-flavours according to how adventurous you are so you can be conservative and use the most stable release or on the other end, you can use the latest packages and offerings right on the bleeding edge.... As I said in one of my threads, it makes me feel like I am out there with the big boys.... My only coplaint to Debian is their horrible partitioner. I wish they would take a leaf out of Mandriva's.... but that is obviously my own opinion.
Asking which distro is the best is a bit like asking which car is the best. They all have different uses and target consumers. For a user friendly distro Mandriva/Ubuntu and derivatives are probably the best. For stability and performance Debian is probably the best if you use "Stable" branch. "Testing" is also good for newer software and performance is great for me. As a server OS, Anti-Trend says that CentOS or Red Hat Enterprise Linux is the best. I would tend to agree, although Debian also make a nice server distro. I really can't see much of a place for SUSE, Ubuntu's more user friendly while RHEL is better as a server distro (comparing it to SUSE server edition). Overall, I vote debian.
I was just looking at some download locations for debian. There are 2 dvd's available (dvd 1 and 2). Do I need both dvds, or do I only need number 1 (version 3.1r4)?
well, i'm using Kubuntu but i also like PCLinuxOS, Sabayon & Vector (for different reasons)[ot]Suzy didn't play nice, probably try downloading her again soon[/ot]
Personally, if you have an 'always-on-connection' go for the netinstall. The image is less than 200MB and you are not downloading stuff which you may not use... During the installation you are asked to choose a mirror location for the packages you require. Otherwise, if you really need to download a DVD image. Download number 1. Everything else can be installed later using 'apt'.
You can actually get the CDs, bincd1 should be enough to install most of the system and the rest can be fetched from repositories. If you have a wired ethernet connection with DHCP it should be very easy.
CentOS has become my choice. After that, I'd say SuSe. I'm a very causual Linux user...and it would probably be better to say I dabble in it. I'm not saying anything that hasn't been here, but just try a few distro's out. DistroWatch is your best friend.
This page is often overlooked on distrowatch, but is the perfect starting point for anyone looking into linux for the first time.
