my favourite linux distro is debian 3.1 sarge, it has apt-get tool uses for updateing system, but i warn you debian is hard to install and configure for newbies, so wath out!

1 Ubuntu
2 Mandriva (Mandrake)
3 Fedora
4 MEPIS
5 SUSE
6 Debian
7 KNOPPIX
8 Gentoo
9 Slackware
10 Damn Small

-----------------------

Your poll list tells me that it's been a while since you thought about choosing a new Distro for yourself. SimplyMEPIS is by far the best new user distro!

I don't think it really matters which linux distro you use as long as you've got support: from the vendor, faqs,ect. All the ballyhoo about "which linux distribution is best" is mostly ego-tripping, as they all are fantastic! The general public is blessed to have an
essentially 'free' operating system at their fingertips that offers so much more than
you can aquire from the 'current status quo system'. Linux has 'transversed' the digital divide, all for the price of obtaining a 'little knowlege' and getting out of your 'comfort zone'. Thank, Tux and let us hope that this new era continues for the good of all mankind.

I use Suse 9.0 pro and 98SE (for the games of the kids), but also Knoppix and Morphix for fun

NewBe to Linux.
Started with Comodore, then DOS 5.0/Win3.1, ending with Win9x-XP.
Just got a Linspire pre-loaded box 2 weeks ago.
Plan to keep my Win98SE for games and Sims.
Purchased SuSE 7.0 2 months ago and have been reading the manuals.
Also have Red Hat 7.3, Novel 9.1 Pro and SuSE 9.0 on disks.
Have a 3 months free subscription to CNR.
Getting Cable Modem line in today.
Let you know later how it turns out.
Any comments/opinions/help would be greatly appreciated.

i use damn small linux, great 50 meg distro

I voted other because there is button for Mepis.
Regards to all.
Jim

I voted Debian because there is no Ubuntu there...since it's made out of Debian sid. :(

My favorite distribution isn't listed. It's Mepis 3.3. I like it because it comes with a nice assortment of apps and being debian based has available a wide variety of programs. I've tried Mandrake from 7.2-10.0, Suse 9.0-9.2, and many others,Mepis is very much worth a try.

There is a little program that is so usefull that I have made it my primary distro this week. It is called Auditor and it is based on Kannotix. This one rocks!!!

I use Arch as my orimary OS. I once said goodbye to Mandrake and roms and said hello to pkg's. Arch has alot to offer but you can't be afraid of the command line. I also use Dyne::bolic as a secondary system.

Slack has always been my main distro. I have used RedHat and some others, but always go back to Slackware for it's simplicity, and stability out of the box.

I certainly voted for Slackware. I use Linux for few years, at home and at work, and I tested many distro`s in time, RedHat, Debian, Gentoo, SuSe, Vector, but I allways returned to my old Slack! There`s nothing like it. For Servers, or for Desktop - it`s the wright choice. It`s simply Linux, no whistles and bells, very stable, everything works as supposed to, everything compiles. Because of Slackware I have learned some Linux, and not how to use some GUI wizard with nice colors :). I reccomend to all of you who want to learn Linux to use Slackware. Someone said a time ago: "give to a newbie who asks questions of forums, 6 months with Slackware, a ton of coffee and cigarets :), and he will not put questions anymore (about Linux), but respond to them".
For my Desktop I use Slackware current, KDE 3.4, OpenOffice 1.4, and many great Open Source apps - it`s the best distro for me

Ubuntu really should be there, I know it hasn't been around for all that long, but things change fast in the Open Source world. I used to be using Suse 9.2, it was very good, but was a little over complicated for my desktop needs! So I tried an old Linspire, Xandros 3.0, Fedora Core 3 and Mandrake. Then I stumbled on Ubuntu, it had what I was looking for, being basically repackaged and easy to install Debian, apt-get rocks and Hoary is very good at doing everything that I want from my Linux desktop. I hope that Ubuntu will have its own voting slot in the future.

I know it's rather new...but please list Ubuntu/Kubuntu.
I started using Linux on RH7, moved to Mandrake..I thought I'd be happy there for a while. Afterwards I thought there could be nothing better than RH9...until Red Hat decided that they wanted to become there own version of the money loving boys in Redmond. Next was Open BSD (Please, no comments about Open BSD not being a Linux Distro...I know that's true but we're going in chronological order here!). Open BSD was maintained on the servers but Debian Woody, and then Debian Sarge were the used on desktops. After Sarge, I was feeling wonderful. Then a customer told me about Ubuntu, and another engineer told me about it the next day. Was this a coincidence? No, just a really powerful and convenient distro for the desktop. Being a KDE lover, I switched from Ubuntu to Kubuntu. There are a couple of glitches but it's really a good distro and probably where I'll stay for some time.

I found it kind of funny that SuSE has the highest percent of users in the poll at 15%, and not one person really commented on it.

I use SuSE9.1 Professional and love it. Configuration and installation were a breeze with all of my new hardware, including the NForce chipset. Also, it provides a good balance between a GUI for those times you just want to have a blast and relax, and a good command line interface for when you really want to get into it with linux.

I also found that it came with the best selection of packages, and for new Linux users, found it to be the easiest distro to learn on.

It's stable, easy to install, eays to configure, and easy to update. The amount of documentation is incredible, and there is almost nothing that you can't do with it.

I have run Slackware(good for the hardcore user, but difficult to install and configure, especially on new performance hardware), Fedora(which I couldn't get to install correctly on my AMD, Nforce, ATI based system, although I'd like to be able to get it running), previous versions of RedHat(which I found somewhat of a challenge to configure), and I tried Gentoo once awhile back and didn't care too much for it.

Right now, I'm running SuSE9.1 Pro, WinXP Pro, and I'm getting ready to install Free BSD and Sun Solaris 10 for Intel.

But so far, my favorite linux distro is SuSE 9.1 Pro. I have been hesitant to upgrade to 9.2 since Novell took them over, as Novell tends to just tear everything up and radically change it to make it completely their own, and I have heard some horror stories about what they have done from friends of mine who tried it, and went back to 9.1 Pro.

I do look forward though to trying the other distros and really getting a feel for them.

I had to answer "other" because you didn't offer Mepis ( http://www.mepis.org/ ) as a choice.

     I use Ubuntu at home as a desktop and server. And at work, we use Ubuntu for desktop and server. Some people might ask why it was adopted so fast at work... The company was founded by me and my cousin ;).
     I've heard many people say that Ubuntu is not suited for the server. Well, considering that we use it on our public and internal servers, on our custom router, and on our extremely high traffic database server, and considering the fact that it hasn't crashed once in 6 months, I'd say it was good enough.

Pure and simple... that's my slack.
I've tried mandrake, redhat, debian... but slackware is for me.

Year, year this distrib. for those who wanna be a real LINUXOID, less graph more commands. This pepper stays away from redhatikus and mandreketikus and other user friendly interfaces.
If you r completly CRAZY on Linux and wanna be GURU, you should use Slackware and nothing else.

Good Luck Buddy;)

I have been using Ubuntu for some time now but now use Kubuntu. Having tried out several distros including SuSe, Mandrake etc I have found the best for my needs.

Well I say try Fedora Core 3. We are all plagued with video problems (those of us that need 3D openGL gaming) but finally I have gotten both ATI and Nvidia based cards to work. Xorg (the replacement for xfree xserver which runs Linux GUI video) needs more improvement.

Make sure you upgrade everything on a regular basis. KDE 3.4 is not pushed yet but I found I liked it. I upgraded all the KDE files. I don't recommend you use the download -auto compile from KDE it's no good with fedora core 3 at least. Use a package manager such as synaptic or smart can help.

Also I like Slackware and Gentoo for some setups and purposes. But all brands of Linux have one great aspect: they are not Windows. I don't know how it's legal for Microsoft to use "Windows" when X-Windows preceded Windows.

Anyway the main thing is not to give up on Linux you will find it a constant learning experience but well worth it wants you get your system up properly. It's great for business - very cost effective and secure. Microsoft not being open source makes it very vulnerable to attack and that's not good with a business no matter what.

Why would anyone use anything else?

I primarily use Kanotix and love it. I tested so many Linux distributions but in every of them I found somthing I did not like (Mepis, Ubuntu, Mandrake, Linspire, Xandros and so on). For years SuSE was my main distribution but with 9.2 I finally switched. I still like the SuSE features but I would like them more if they would work without annoyances. On an older computer I run Morphix light GUI with xfce and on my laptop I run Yoper and SphinxOS (based on Mepis).

PCLinuxOS!
Im new to linux. Tryed out many distros and this one stands out big
time. Out of the box (liveCD install option) its all there, all the aps you
can think of!
All the plugins for browser, mail, media, downloading etc just works.
Other distros i tryed like Mepis, Kubunto, Suse, windows etc al requires
tons of fixing and chasing aps, plugins, codecs...
PCLinuxOS is different, still a preview but works well as main OS.
Imagine 30minutes of install and its all there!

Try this one out.

JAH

Gentoo

I use a Mepis distro which was the only one that managed to install to my laptop (Acer Aspire 1605DLC) since the other efforts with Mandrake proved a incompatibility with the display driver.
Straightforward easy and simple, Mepis is damn fast on my machine too.
It works better than the XP that shares the other part of the hard disk (dualboot).

I use Ubuntu Linux 5.04 preview on 3 desktops and 2 notebooks
I use Debian (Sarge) in VMWare Sessions and 1 desktop

I use
DEBIAN (testing) (sarge) on polaris which is a gateway PIII 500
DEBIAN (testing) (sarge) on gemni which is a dell poweredge 1300
DEBIAN (testing) (sarge) on northstar which is a HST PII 400
DEBIAN (testing) (sarge) on nexus which is a Dell Inspiron 700 PII 400
Redhat 9.0 Soon to be FEdora Core 3 on landshark which is a dell latitude CPTS

Gentoo is about portage and the people.

I love that I never have to search private .rpm packages or get lost in own compiles, 'cause portage handles stuff consistent and reliable.

I actually run Gentoo way behind the current bleeding edge. This usage does not get much coverage, but I can assure you it works quite well. Although I learned that you should indeed maintain even non-security stuff every other month or so. Gentoo moves fast, and I got outpaced by not upgrading for 6 month.

But every obscure dependency trouble #gentoo on freenode, the bug database and the forums helped solving. The Gentoo community is a nice bunch of people. I hope you all enjoy your distro as much as I do!

I use Gentoo after one year and it's the best distro for me, because i love optimize, tuning OS [CFLAGS, USE etc]. I like compile programs, and thanks portage tree I have always newest programs and ebuilds for this. Summary: Gentoo is fast, fresh and stable.
greetz

In my experience, Slackware is the easiest distro to actually get running all the applications that I need. No commercial B/S or goofy graphics during setup - It makes me feel like a grown-up!

Yoper is also a usable distro for the basic office stuff, but I gave up after several rounds of "dependancy hell" trying to make LyX, R and Grass fully functional.

I am currently using SimplyMepis on my laptop (dual boot w/XP) and really like it, especially the debian-based package manager. I switched over from Mandrake 10.1 very recently. While Mandrake was much easier (for me) to configure, the RPM package system was a real pain with all of the dependency problems! I have another "test machine" that I am using to test the installation and performance of different distributions. Ubuntu seems fairly straight forward, and Gentoo has been a bear - but some day .....!

Well, I wanted a distro that's source code based or should I say, compile-all type. I didn't want a binary based distro. I found Gentoo by accident and now I'm loving it. I'm not changing Gentoo... Finally, I have a Linux distro that'll last my box forever ;)