OT: "Best" Linux Distro?

[Gordon JC Pearce]

Chuck Guzis wrote:
> 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.

Rosegarden is pretty good.  If you're serious about computer-produced 
notation you'd use Lilypond though.  From what I've seen of Rosegarden 
(I use hardware sequencers rather than stuff on the PC) it can export 
Lilypond source files.

> 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.

I'm starting to get a bit - not annoyed, exactly, not disillusioned, but 
something - annoyed with Slackware recently.  At least it's nice and 
easy to install.

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

You want NetBSD for that.

> 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.

You *definitely* want NetBSD for that.

Gordon.