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What is the best Linux distro?

Oooh, the arguments will fly! ** My opinions only: **

Best beginner's Linux: Mandrake
Most hacker friendly Linux: Slackware
Most GNU friendly Linux (if you're Communist, Socialist or Richard Stallman): Debian
Linux most likely to take over the world whether we want it to or not: Red Hat

Now, my editorial comment.

I've been very unhappy with the Linux community lately -- I think it's become too bloated, too swollen and too ponderous. Also, there is a strong tendency to lash out at any kind of non-GPL development, even if it isn't commercial. I've gotten some nastygrams on a number of my (open source even!) works, saying I'm an idiot because I think GPL inadequately protects author's rights (this is a whole other topic). For a community that claims to be as inclusive as it is, Linux mongers can be worse than Microsoft apologists.

This doesn't matter to me anyway. While I'm happy that Linux has made desktop Unix a reality for many users (and Mac OS X will only further this), I'm a BSD user of long standing due to my University of California background, and almost all my servers are based on BSD (mostly NetBSD, although Mac OS X qualifies, and so does OS/MP [based on SunOS 4.x]).

If I may further plug NetBSD, it's open source, and its entire watchword is portability. I'm going to slap it on my spare Dreamcast soon, once I build the ISO and the cross-compiler tools on my Power Mac 7300. It also borrowed a lot of security code from OpenBSD, which is a very solid system, so it has good robustness against attacks to boot. It runs on Amigas, classic and Power Macs, PCs, HPs, Suns, DEC Alphas, SH3 based systems (including the DC), ... you name it.

http://www.netbsd.org/

Now that I've stirred the pot ...

try knoppix its great you can boot off of a cd no need to install on your hard drive very useful to.

That sounds like a good idea but, I would like a stable version that you don't need to download abunch of extra files just to get one downloaded application to work.

Perhaps a qualifying question would be, what do you intend to use it for?

All of my NetBSD systems are servers; I don't really think of it as a truly optimal desktop or workstation OS (yet). I think the best workstation Unix is definitely Mac OS X, and yes, I *am* biased.

There's a number of consumer workstation Linuces (ignoring things like Lindows) which you can try, if you want it to be a desktop system. SuSE seems to be popular in this regard, and there is much end-user tech support for Red Hat if that sort of thing matters to you.

If you want to run a server, you would be better off with a leaner, meaner distribution rather than the "and the kitchen sink" stuff you'll find sold commercially -- less to install, less to take up disk space, and less programs to present security risks. This was another reason why I went with NetBSD, because it has less thrown-in crap (install packages are easy to come by if you're actually interested in said crap, though). OpenBSD and FreeBSD are nearly as clean.

Elowen wrote:That sounds like a good idea but, I would like a stable version that you don't need to download abunch of extra files just to get one downloaded application to work.

so buy it at cheapbytes or something like i did for 10$ on cd much better than downloading etc. i have version 3.2 i believe a new one is out.

the best distro is being developed; my sig tells me otherwise.

other than that, i'd use Debian.

I think the best workstation Unix is definitely Mac OS X, and yes, I *am* biased.

Why are you biased? Because you use it? Don't you use it because it's the best?

Well, of course