OT: "Best" Linux Distro?

[Chuck Guzis]

I've had Linux in one form or the other since the very early release days
(0.something).  I've never found it for use as a desktop system (especially
GUI) particularly compelling.  I think many folks secretly hold the same
opinion, else why the rise of products like Wine?  And there are some areas
where it really is deficient--multimedia for example.  Specialized apps are
another area--I've never found a really good WYSIWYG musical notation
editor for Linux.

For doing real work, I like command line interfaces, so I keep a Linux
system around that I can telnet into from my Windows desktop.  I might be
tempted to use a Mac as a desktop machine, but my customers in general
don't, so it's best to live where they do, so to speak.

My mail and net server is Linux and I change distros there when I change
hardware--every few years.  There's no reason to do otherwise--the new
distros aren't as a rule faster and the server basically never crashes
since it's always doing the same thing day after day.

As far as distros go, I started with Slackware, but have been using RH for
some time, simply because I've been using RH for some time..  It really
doesn't matter all that much--RH does tend to be very spotty in its
releases--you can often find some very old release of a package in their
distros--and they have the RH way of doing things.  Debian isn't bad but
can get to be very confusing and verbose during installation--and help in
making choices is often difficult to find.  I've also tried SuSE and it's
pretty good.

But mostly, I want to install the blasted thing and be done with it.

Others have observed the bloat in Linux and I agree.  I started running it
on an 8MB 386 and it was pretty snappy.  I don't think that feat could be
reproduced with any of the current distros.

Cheers,
Chuck