If you can stand one last comment: My opinion might be of some value since I am a srtict Linux user without any professional computer skills or years of experience. Heck, I'm just beginning to get a grip on simple shell scripts, and I want/need to learn so much more. Although I never met a distro I didn't like, I find myself developing a preference for the Debian flavors, MEPIS in particular because it's easy to use, and does everything I want. It comes with all the apps I like (ex:K3B over CD Roast), and both the Kpackage manager and the Synaptic Package manager make updates and adding software relatively painless. I have it nicely networked on three computers in my home, and I'm not even sure how I did it! It runs as well on my laptop as it does on my desktops, and I would count myself quite satisfied with it's performance as I don't miss windows at all. Run it as a live CD on your computer for a week or so to give it a good try. Ubuntu would be my second choice as it works very well, however it's intentionally light on apps, and not having a ROOT user spooks me a bit. All ROOT functions are done in temporary su mode using your same user password. I ran SUsE for months, and I liked it, but I never could play a DVD or .wmv file on it (My ignorance, not the fault of the distro). I had MEPIS playing DVDs and .wmv files an hour after I installed it, in both Mplayer and xine. Fedora worked pretty well, but I still lacked the experience to get it to do what I wanted it to do. That's pretty much the same story with a half dozen other distros I played with. That's it. Just my opinions and experiences. Let me end by saying the best thing about Gnu/Linux is having a choice! Stu On Saturday 14 May 2005 09:49, Victor Odhner wrote: > I want to thank everybody for their excellent > comments on this subject. > > Because I support some apps under RHEL at work, > I will start with CentOS which I downloaded last > night. I'll try to make this my initial "home" > distro. I installed "SystemRescueCD" as a boot > option, and use it for misc hacking. (The ease > with which it found my slightly difficult > network card gave me a warm feeling for Gentoo.) > > Next I'll use some extra space to try out other > systems: Gentoo, Ubuntu and SuSe just for the > exposure; Fedora only if I have problems with > CentOS; and revisit Knoppix and Mepis. > > With all this switching around, I expect to > become a blinkin' wizard in grub, parted, etc. > I'm already pretty far along with these. > > Thanks again, > > Vic > --------------------------------------------------- > PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us > To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change you mail settings: > http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss --------------------------------------------------- PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change you mail settings: http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss