Distros I Like.

My last post reviewed some various window managers for Linux. Today I'd like to list some Linux distros that I've been impressed with.

K/Ubuntu - My current favorite distribution. Huge community and tons of documentation. 6 month release cycle. Tons of packages and great package management. Easy to set up and get going. It's default desktop is Gnome, which as everyone should know is not my favorite. Kubuntu is good, but is kind of the red-headed step-child to Ubuntu, so it doesn't get all of the cool features of Ubuntu.

PCLinuxOS - A great distro. Very devoted, but small community. Great hardware support. Ready to use right at first boot, with all multimedia codecs installed. Probably the best choice for first time Linux users. Unknown release cycle. Packages not the most up-to-date, because they only have one guy doing it. KDE based.

Damn Small Linux - The name says it all (50 mb LiveCD, 200 MB installed in HD). Great for old computersor running from a thumb drive in qemu. Based on Knoppix. Small supported packages repository, but can add the Debian repository. Many packages are out of date. Fluxbox/JWM based.

Foresight Linux - This is a new one to me. It greatest feature is the conary package manager, making it easy to roll back packages. Not a huge package repository. Gnome based, but a KDE version is coming soon.

Honorable Mentions

Puppy Linux - Built from scratch. Few packages. Very fast.

Mandriva - KDE based. Great distro. Used it for a long time and they are doing some great innovative things.

Fedora - Tons of resources. Good solid distro backed by Red Hat. Gnome based.

Mint Linux - Ubuntu with codecs installed by default. Lags behind Ubuntu in releases. Has some custom applications.

OpenSuse - Good beginner distro, backed by Novell. Seems a bit heavy to run. KDE based.

Mepis - Debian based. KDE desktop. Back in the day it had some problems with package management, but I think that's fixed.

Slax - Great LiveCD comes in several flavors.

Give these a try too.

Knoppix
Sidux
Vector
Slackware
Debian
PC-BSD
FreeBSD
OpenBSD
NetBSD
OpenSolaris
Dream Linux
Backtrack
Dyne:bolic
Wolvix


Anyway, these are some I've played with and have been impressed with. See Distrowatch for even more options.