I started off with SuSE, moved to RedHat, and am now using Debian at home with RedHat on the production and test servers at work. I've also used Slackware on an underpowered e-mail reading/router machine at home.

RedHat no longer is anything for a home user, a market which has been farmed off onto the Fedora project while RedHat directs itself toward business customers, but RH 9 has excellent hardware detection. Hardware detection is a Good Thing to have when installing on a laptop and it is what originally motivated me to switch from Suse 7.0 to RedHat 7.1 a few years ago.

Now that I'm a much more experienced user, Debian is hard to beat because of the amazing number of packages you can download and install with a simple command like "apt-get install kdebase". Mind you, the APT tool and the necessary repositories also exist for RPM platforms (RedHat, Mandrake, Suse, Connectiva), but Debian has so many more packages already built, which should save you a lot of work. You also don't have to subscribe to a for-pay service to get the latest updates. So, while I had to compile Perl 5.8.1 and then 5.8.2 for our RedHat systems, on Debian "apt-get upgrade" installed Perl 5.8.2 automatically.

Be careful, though. Debian unstable Perl builds have threading enabled by default.

If you are just looking for a Unix-like system, don't forget that there are also FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD. I've installed OpenBSD a grand total of once and you should not attempt to do so without one of the installation guides next to you, with all of your hardware cataloged as well. OpenBSD's default configuration is claimed to be the securest available.

Update: rewrote last sentence in the second paragraph; added the words "on Debian" above.

That's kind of like asking, "Whats the best brand of beer?" Everybody has a different answer. My suggestion: brew your own. Not only will you end up with something you are intimately familiar with, but you'll also learn enough along the way to formulate your own educated opinions on the way the other distros do it.

-sauoq
"My two cents aren't worth a dime.";

RedHat has stopped the development of their free user desktop distro to concentrate on their server release. However they do support another project that is taking over the free redhat distro. It is called Fedora. They recently release their core one release and I have heard it is actually pretty good. Some beleive it is just Redhat 10 in disguise. If you are a RH user and want to stick with the Redhat feel then the transition to Fedora is what you want.

I fully agree with Tom on Mandrake being the best (or at least a very good) distribution for a newbie.

Cheers,
MichaelD

I fear you will get plenty of conflicting answers, everyone has their own favourite.

A lot depends on what you know already, what you have at work/school/univerity and what the people around you are using.

I've used RedHat at home and at work for a number of years. I don't hate it, but I'd have to say that I don't think it's the best thing since sliced bread. SuSE is another popular mass-market distro with a strong "enterprise" support angle, it's also supposed to be more popular in Europe than RedHat.

There are a host of smaller distros which have gone for niche market, and got good reputations in thier space. Mandrake, Lindows, Xandros all have good reputations for slick user interface and good desktop functionality.

There also the so called more "geek" distros, such as Slackware and Debian, these have a reputation for being awkward to install, but once running they are fine and dependable. There is also the ultimates, such as LFS and Gentoo, where you can build everything from scratch, and configure your system exactly as you want.

There are also some nice Linux on a CD distros, where you can boot from a CD, test things out and see if it's for you, without even having to do anything to the system!

Although not strictly Linux, don't rule out the BSD family, they offer similar functionaility with similar tools on similar hardware. If you want a ready made BSD system then look no further than a Mac, running OSX. You can probably also pick up second hand UNIX/RISC hardware very cheap, and run either it's original Unix or a Linux/BSD distro on that!

If you have never installed Linux before then I'd say join a Linux User Group, and a Perl Mongers Group for good measure. Get someone to help, and have a go, and I'd suggest a "boxed" distro first, though with time you may migrate to a more geeky version like Debian.

Well, it depends. RH is pretty and has flashy gui apps and such. I had my first taste of linux on RH. But, in my opinion, that wasn't the best idea. It goes back to the old debate on how to teach a child to swim. Do you tell them things bit by bit, leaving off complicated details until they really need them? Or do you opt to instead throw them in the water and make them learn, figuring that they'll be better off later? In my experience, the first way is better for swimming lessons, but the second is better for linux.

That's why I affirm the reccomendation to free-style it, but I also reccomend checking out slackware. I learned a lot from slackware. No fancy guis, but a lot of good old-fashioned command line learning. Switch to the flashyapps when you know what's going on under the hood. Then, you're both flashy and knowledgeable. Tada!

You're new to the black art of Linux?

It may take a few weeks, or it may take months. For many it will take years, and a few, sad, lost souls, will never reach awareness.

Many will argue, decry and defame, but there is only one true answer to the question you pose.

The "other" one.