If I were to migrate to Linux right now.....

[poltr1]

.....which flavor and/or version should I go with?

I'm currently running a dual-boot Win95B/Mandrake Linux 8.2 on my testbed system, which I call "slave" (after one of the computers in Blake's 7). Slave is a trash-picked Gateway Pentium-II 400 Mhz with 192 Mb of RAM. After adding a few spare parts -- video card, hard drives, network card -- it's become a working system, although I hardly use it. I use it so infreqently that I forgot my screen-saver password when it's running Linux, and I have to reboot it.

Last year at this time, I was intrigued with Linspire 5.0. I've often thought that if there was a decent version of Linux on the desktop, it would provide Windows with some serious competition. This past year, I've been hearing nice things about Xandros and Ubuntu. Add a copy of OpenOffice, Firefox, and Thunderbird, and that would cover nearly all the bases.

Another advantage of the flavors of Linux is that I can freely distribute the OS. If I decide to get rid of my testbed, or any other old system, I can install the OS and then give the machine to someone. That's a lot harder to do with Windows.

So, for those of you who have worked with these flavors of Linux, I'd be interested in hearing your experiences. Ditto that for the KDE and Gnome desktop environments.

Comments

[autographedcat.livejournal.com]

I highly highly highly recommend Ubuntu. It's Debian-based, and well optimized for the desktop. Hands down the best desktop install of Linux I've used yet.

I actually have xubuntu running on my elderly Dell laptop, to pretty good effect.

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

Another vote for Ubuntu; you might need to install the slightly watered-down version on that machine (I tried to get a slightly more powerful machine through the install, and it choked on the graphics), but it's far and away the best starting point for Linux right now.