Choosing a Distro

[Victor Odhner]

I have a SUSE system on my dual-boot home machine, about two years
old.  I've got some files under a user directory that I want to
keep, but I've really done very little with the system.

Now I am about to become more active in Linux and will probably buy
a new distribution to load up before too long.

Is there a "best choice" among the distributors:
 * for ease of upgrading, while not disturbing existing user files?
 * for smoothest desktop for habituated Win98 users?
 * for best chance at getting a peep out of my PnP SoundBlaster?
 * for ease of administration?  I'm a full time Solaris programmer,
   but not an experienced system administrator, and want to spend
   my home-computing time USING the machine rather than tinkering
   with it.

It's a K6/300 with 128MB of memory.  This is basically for desktop
usage, for editing, browsing, telnet and FTP to other systems, and a
little programming.  I may want to provide a NAT connection to serve
one other system in the home.

Eventually, I would keep Linux running most of the time;  so I
aspire eventually to getting VMWare or something to satisfy existing
Win98 addictions.

I haven't seen any 'religious wars' among proponents of various
distros on this list, but would the above profile tend to steer me
towards one vendor or another?

Thanks,

Vic