.. Ubuntu, unlike the others, is usable right away after installation?
SuSE's install process was a nightmare, as was the way things were organized in the menus. It kind of reminded me of the time i "upgraded" from Win98 to XP the first time, was so confused because nothing was where it was "supposed" to be. I never did get the repositories working, because the links on the site for 10.2 were wrong, and they weren't setup and ready to go after the installation. i shot them a message and they removed the links, and instead of putting up the correct ones they posted openSuSE 10.3.
RHEL, are they still making that? Not that it matters, since this is about DESKTOP linux not server. CentOS i've heard good things about, but never used myself. From what i was told it just lacked in hardware support, and was more oriented toward server use. about half(or more) the linux distributions are for server use, and probably about 1/4 of the rest is more centered for research, rescue/boot CDs. there are really only a couple distros meant for Desktop use.
Fedora Core i found to be too limited in what could and couldn't be installed though that more then likely changed since i've last used it(i hope). Other-wise it was very stable and fairly easy to use.
PCLinuxOS had a very small repository, and most dependencies needed for things i used everyday just weren't there. there was also a rather ugly bandwidth cap when downloading from their repository.
Xandros I actually kind of liked way back in 2.0, it just was not free to download things from the repository with the "Open circulation" edition. ultimitely though it's the distro that actually gave me the ambition to actually try to make the switch from windows in the first place.
Ubuntu this is the one i keep coming back to time and time again. It really has just about everything that most people need...not necessarily out of the box, but the various multimedia packages people want are in the repository. My only complaint is, their focus is purely on security in terms of when they update their repository. my concern would be more toward certain apps stability, mostly Pidgin, and certain DVD related apps. It would be nice if they had better GUI Video/DVD authoring/editing/ripping apps. Maybe this will change with the newest release, who knows.
Debian...well i've not tried pure Debian. the big reason is the fact that it's install spans 5 FULL DVDs. not something someone would like to download even on the fastest of connection speeds, nevermind my worthless 20k dialup i get on my second phone line, or even the 48k on the main line. I'd actually have to buy it from a store somewhere online to get it in less then about 8 months, likely more. 4.4GB x 5 = 22GB. I hear from so many folks on forums that say Debian is sooo much better then ubuntu...but with no proof offered...strange eh?
as far as companies needing to make their software and have a version ported to linux.. i agree completely. except adobe.. they can keep their over-priced garbage. i mean seriously.. they want over $1000 for photoshop...you can do pretty much everything photoshop has on GIMP, with the gimpshop plugin. In all honesty i've seen much better work done with the GIMP. the only difference between the two other then the price-tag, is the menus organization, and a couple names of tools are different. Don't know about others but it's my opinion that software should never cost more than the MS OS it runs on. I could see maybe $40, but $100+? um.. no thanks.
turn me off to using it as well.)
