Please tell why it is better.

I don't think there is one linux that is really better than another. Part of using Linux is picking the one that suits you. I run Redhat for my laptop and server here. Smoothwall for my firewall and E-Smith for email. I also use Knoppix when I need Linux in a hurry.

I would have voted except my favorite is not included in the list.....


GENTOO Linux

Great source based distribution, pain in the ass to install but the performance increase is considerable when compared to a canned distribution like redhat or suse.

Is there a performance tweak?

You forgot gentoo please add it to your poll.
Because as things stand gentoo would be in the lead with 2 votes.

It is all the rage now especially amongst gamers!

Why I had been using Mandrake 9.0 fancied something new because
Mandrake 9.1 in my humble opinion was a step backwards not forwards. (pure marketing)
Gentoo is harder to configure, and takes forever to install. but more rewarding. Outstanding support in many languages at www.gentoo.org
Very educational.

There are things to be said for Debian. But IF I do say them here I'll get censored again.

Needless to say, Gentoo has it's place. But all I can say is dependencies SUCK in everything EXCEPT Debian. People don;t understand Debian and therefore bad mouth it.

If you really WANT to know more. Ask.

Debian gets my vote.
It feels faster than both RedHat & Mandrake and I really like the packagesystem. There are LOTS of packages too.

I have also used Gentoo and like it, but I just don't have the time to wait for the compiles. A disaster recovery on Gentoo seems like a nightmare building up the OS from scratch.

/Toby

The oldest distribution still out there and getting better all the time.

Slackware is the second Linux distribution to be available to the masses. (the first being Software Landing Systems - SLS, which Slackware derived from.)

There are no segmented distributions (i.e.: "Professional", "Server", etc.) as everything is included for just about any install scenerio, whether workstation, server, firewall, etc.

You do have to be intimate with your hardware and you should know a little something about *nix in general. This is not a glitzy "Look at the fancy GUI while I throw everything on your system and configure it the way we think you should run your computer" installation.

(My two cents, your milage may vary. )

Well, for hardware recognition, ease of application installation, configuration changes, multimedia and networking I'd say Mandrake wins by a long shot for home users (Debian for server setup).

Humm I like some of stuff with MAndrake.. and some of stuff with RedHat.. Haven't used too many of the others and am really still deciding myself..

In mean time I shall sleep on it.

When i first saw this thread i voted for suse but after looking at some of the more advanced options my opinion is leaning towards gentoo (one of my firends uses it and has over 160 gb filled with games and no that is not a typo)

lately my computer has seemed a bit... off while SuSe has great support (its usb support rules)
it lacks in other areas like good solid porformance (as least in my experiance)

in my opinion SuSe is a great distribution but there are better ones out there (gentoo)

SuSe was a contender.. but I forget why I opted out.

Still have RedHat and Mandrake.. But I am just looking for something different.

Gentoo was the one I ended up choosing. I like the idea of custumizing the OS for my needs. (Still kina thinking about Linux From Scratch.. but I think that might be a more then I want to chew.)


___________________
I am hungry.. But not starving for knowledge )

I love suse to death, I didn't even start off with it. I got it as my second distro, mandrake being first, and learned how to use it. Right now I recently tried to switch to redhat but got slapped in the face with something that felt like wind*ws xp (redhat 9 pro), so I went back and upgraded my suse to 9.0 prof. from suse 8.1 prof.

i have found http://www.linuxiso.org a good provider of the different flavors users have come to love and hold close to there hearts when answering polls just like this one

i have not found a dual opteron linux distro to date

To hunter_da_punter and your last comment about dual opteron distro, I found one but it will cost you an arm and a leg.
Suse linux server 8 at www.suse.com will support I think up to 4-64bit amd opteron processors at the wonderful (not!) price of 1,400.00.

Forgive a newbie... Well I tried about six months ago to get into Linux and failed. However Debian (via Knoppix) and Mandrake were both easy to install in my laptop (with a -nousb switch).

Now though I'm back in the fold with Suse 9. Everything works - pcmcia, usb, ATI graphics, sound, winmodem etc.. etc.. Loving it!

Still a newbie and learning.. That's why I joined here!

I just installed SuSe 9.0 professional (kernel 2.6.x ready) on 5 different machines with only two hitches. One was a sound problem with a Pavilion 553w (Athalon with onboard everything) which I simply had to turn off plug and play OS in the bios. The other was the dreaded win modem driver search. Support was good, updates did not hurt anything, and 3D acceleration works on all machines. Setup for networking and masquarading was intuitive,simple, and complete in about 35 minutes for all 5 machines. I also tried out the install along side windows feature (resizing the NTFS file system to share hard drive) and had no problems. I am planning to repartion one system with a fat share so I can write as well as read windows application and doc files. DVD play back with Xine is outstanding! Love the screen shots, but, I had to enable by default DMA for the DVD drive. KDE 3.14 works better than Gnome for a change (I will try to fix that latter) and I think just needs to be updated. The amount of software that came with this distribution was mind bogling. Installation of my favorite browser "Firebird" went without a hitch. I am very satisfied with this release. I dumped RED HAT 9.0 which worked just as well since they are sending the project to Fedora.. I was a long time RH fan until they dumped the home desktop market. Fedora is hard to get and changes very rapidly. It will be more of a proving ground than a solid platform.