Advice Sought

[sinanju]

So I read recently (on Robert Cringely's website) that Microsoft and Novell are getting together to cooperate on some stuff. Novell, for those who don't know, owns SuSE Linux.* Given Microsoft's piratical ethics (make agreement, stab partner in the back, destroy or absorb whatever value the partner's corpse retains, lather, rinse, repeat), this does not make me happy. Especially since I'm running SuSE 10.1 on my PC.

It's possible that this won't cause problems. But I wouldn't bet on it. So I'm thinking it's time to explore other distributions of Linux. I've never used any others. I've downloaded and burned to CD an install image for Ubuntu. I'm going to load it on a spare computer and play around with it.

Anyone out there got any recommendations for alternative distros they'd like to share? Anything I should try out--or stay away from? (I'm definitely not going to try, uh...whichever one is noted as being for hardcore command line users.)

Comments

[aquamarcia.livejournal.com]

I've been tinkering with Ubuntu for about a week now and really like it. Prior to that I'd fiddled a bit with Debian, and find that Ubuntu (based on Debian) is an improvement. Other than those two distros I really haven't fiddled much with Linux.

Fedora seems to be the most popular distro among people I know, but that last time I tried that one it was still called Red Hat. Fedora is reputed to be fairly user-friendly, but I suspect Ubuntu has it beat on that score.

You might find wikipedia's comparison of Linux distributions (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Linux_distributions) helpful.

[sinanju.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I was originally thinking about Red Hat or Debian, but after looking at the wiki, I decided to start with Ubuntu. Since I'm loading it on a spare machine, I figure I can try it out for a while then try something else if I decide to.

[kmg-365.livejournal.com]

I don't use Linux, so I can't give any recommendations. However, do you think MS is interested in squashing Linux, or in squashing Novell's other products (networking software, GroupWise, iFolder, etc.)?

I'd think it would be the latter. Knowing Microsoft's arrogance, they probably don't see Linux as much of a threat to their OS monopoly.