1. Debian Debian is one of the original distros, dating back to 1993. The Debian package management system is generally considered superior to the RPM systems, although they have closed the gap (mainly by incorporating features from Debian's system). It has been criticised in the past for lagging behind on software versions and its slow development cycle, but these are due to conscious decisions by the Debian leadership. The main package repositories concentrate on stability. This is not only in the "doesn't crash" meaning, but also as in "doesn't change": equally important in a production environment. If you run a dozen servers and a couple of hundred desktops, you don't want to be continually upgrading everything and dealing with the associated hassle, multiplied a hundred-fold. Debian stable is ideal for those you follow the "if it ain't broken, don't fix it" philosophy. Debian has testing and experimental branches that are more bleeding edge too. Whichever branch you choose to use, the amount of available software is staggering. Some of the other distros covered here come on a DVD, some on a CD, but Debian is available as three DVDs! That's 13GB of software packages. The Debian web site currently claims to have almost 19,000 packages of Free Software. This is another philosophical difference with Debian, they are more committed to the ideals of free software, placing non-free software – things like Nvidia's own video drivers – in separate repositories. Not only is there a large spread of software in Debian, but it is also available for eleven different CPU architectures. No wonder their release cycle is so long, that's a lot of testing and quality control. One of Debian's great advantages is that it is always possible to upgrade from one version to the next, without reinstalling and having to reconfigure everything from scratch. Debian has been chosen as the base system or starting point for many other distros, including several of those covered here, it's the distro makers' distro of choice. Reasons to try: 2. Fedora Fedora (previously known as Fedora Core) is the community distro sponsored by Red Hat. Spun off from their commercial distros, Fedora is now more experimental, more up to date and far more fun than an enterpriseoriented distro could ever be. Recent releases of Fedora have been less than dynamic and have been overshadowed by their competitors, but Fedora 8 looks like it could change that. This is a solid and polished release with most of the features you would expect from a general purpose distro, and a few more. For example, most distros have a basic firewall configuration tool, but Fedora's is far more comprehensive than before, and more so than other distros now. Fedora also includes SELinux (Security Enhanced Linux) which is enabled by default and provides further protection against the harm caused by intruders. Fedora is a combination of the solid background of Red Hat with the more up to date software and features provided by a free, community distribution, one not restricted by the demands of corporate users for a static software and feature set where the only changes they want are security updates. Fedora's handling of restricted file formats, like MP3, has improved. Instead of refusing to play them, it now pops up an information window and offers to download and install the required codec. The package management is also improved, and works without a network connection now, taking packages from the installation disc only. A copy installed less than two months after the release date immediately wanted to install 143 updates, on a default install, so you can't complain about the folks at Fedora not keeping it up to date! Reasons to try: 3. OpenSUSE All of the major commercial distros now have community editions, free versions of the OS that are supported (and in part developed) by the community, although that generally includes some of the official developers. SUSE's community release is OpenSUSE and it has had something of a rough ride lately. The 10.1 and 10.2 releases suffered from some significant faults, particularly with the package managers. Yes, that's a plural, 10.2 had two package managers, neither of which was very good. The 10.3 release has put all that behind them, with a solid distro with just about everything you would expect, wrapped up in the usual professional SUSE packaging. YaST (Yet another Setup Tool) is anything but. It is a comprehensive control panel for just about anything to do with the system and is the key to getting the most from OpenSUSE. When you want to use new hardware, don't go looking for drivers, just plug it in and go to the relevant section of YaST. This is a different way of working for those used to Windows, but it is far simpler once you realise that the answer to most questions is "run YaST". As with several of the other distros covered here, the community forms a large part of the experience of using OpenSUSE. That's not to say that chatting on the forums is required, but the community resources, such as the forums as wiki, are a great asset whenever you need help, find a bug or want to request a new feature. SUSE's installation discs are just that, there are Live CDs to try it out, but they are separate from the installers. The Live CDs are available with Gnome or KDE desktops, while the installer gives you a choice. Speaking of choice, this is one of the few distros here that still maintains a version for PowerPC users. Reasons to try: 4. Mandriva Mandriva, and its previous incarnation of Mandrake, used to be the most popular distro among Linux Format readers a few years ago. Sales of the magazine were always highest when we had this on the cover discs. But, with much publicised financial troubles a few years ago, Mandriva seemed to take its eye off the ball and distros like Ubuntu beat it at its own game of providing an easy to use distro to suit new users and power users alike. Mandriva has recovered from its problems, but has some way to go to recapture their glory days. That said, Mandriva is still a very good distro that makes life easy for those new to Linux. The Mandriva Control Center, where just about all administrative tasks are performed, is still a good example of a comprehensive, yet easy to use admin tool. Mandriva's urpmi package manager brings almost all of the power and flexibility of Debian's apt system to RPM packages, and the Control Center provides a useful graphical interface for this. It also makes for the easy addition of unofficial repositories such as the Penguin Liberation Front that provides packages that cannot be distributed globally with Mandriva for legal reasons, such as multimedia codecs and DVD-playing tools. Installation is also very fast with Mandriva, but not at the cost of choice. Some distros speed up the process by installing a standard set of packages. Mandriva lets you choose what you want from selections of desktop environments, servers and development tools. 3D desktop effects are catered for, provided you have a suitable video card. While its crown may have slipped, Mandriva is still a contender as a generalpurpose distro and well worth further investigation. Reasons to try: 5. Ubuntu Ubuntu is undoubtedly the distro success story of recent years, having come from nowhere to be one of the most popular distros in three years. What made it so successful? A ten million dollar cash injection certainly did no harm, but throwing money at Free Software doesn't make is magically good, as Mandrake found to their cost. What appeals about Ubuntu so much is that it 'just works'. You click the installer icon, answer a couple of questions and it takes care of the rest for you. Dual-booting with Windows is something that most installers handle, but Ubuntu is rare in that it also detects other Linux installations and adds them to its boot menu. Ubuntu is a Debian derivative, with all the benefits that brings. It is not a one-way street though, Ubuntu feeds improvements back to Debian. Being based on the testing branch, Ubuntu provides more recent software, although updates to newer versions normally only happen with new Ubuntu releases, with the obvious exception of security updates. Ubuntu is generally installed from a combined live and installation CD, although DVDs are available. The size of a CD restricts the number of packages that can be installed, so Ubuntu has only one desktop choice, Gnome, but others can be installed from the online repositories. If you don't want Gnome, try, like Kubuntu or Xubuntu that use the KDE and Xfce desktops respectively. New versions are released every six months (dates reflected in the version number), but you do not have to reinstall when you want to upgrade. Ubuntu is based on Debian, so rolling upgrades from one release to the next are possible, and Ubuntu's graphical tools mean you don't even need to use the command line to do so. Hardware detection is good, it handled everything on the test laptop, including the webcam that googling had indicated didn't work with Linux. Reasons to try: 6. Gentoo Gentoo is unique among the distros covered here, for a number of reasons. The most obvious is that, with a very few exceptions, software is installed from source code instead of using the precompiled binary packages offered by all the others. While this sounds hard, the mechanics of compilation are handled by the package manager, the main outward sign of this difference is the increased time taken, although a set of binary packages in included on the install discs to speed up initial installation. The main difference though is that Gentoo does not try to hide the inner workings of the distro behind easy to use GUI tools. This is a distro for those that want to know what is going on behind the scenes and get their hands dirty tweaking it. For this is Gentoo's greatest strength: the sheer amount of control that it offers the users. From the USE flags that allow you to modify how software is compiled, through the choice of whether to use packages from the stable or testing branches (or a mixture of both) to the text based configuration files that let you set up how every little thing works, this distribution seems like it's marked "Control freaks only" wherever you look. If you want a simple point-and-click setup, then most of the other Linux distros that we have covered here are more suited to you – but if you want to set things up exactly as you want or need, Gentoo should be on your shortlist. Gentoo doesn't really have release versions like all other distros. The installation discs have versions, but an up to date system is the same whatever the starting point, whether it was first installed last month or five years ago. Reasons to try: 7. DSL DSL stands for Damn Small Linux (not to be confused with DSL internet). The name tells you most of what you need to know about this distro. Another Debian derivative, being based on Knoppix, it's raison d'etre is to provide a live CD that will fit on a 50MB business card CD. When you consider LXF has to hack Knoppix CDs to fit onto our 650MB CDs, you'll appreciate what an achievement it is to fit a desktop distro on a disc thirteen times smaller! Of course, there is no OpenOffice.org, Gnome, or KDE: DSL uses a carefully chosen set of apps to stay within the 50MB limit. Some programs are older versions, including the Linux kernel, but there would be no point in this distro if it were allowed to grow beyond 50MB, it would be just another small distro. Don't think that the small size makes it unusable. The programs chosen work well and cover the usual range of needs, and the small size means it will run a desktop with only 24MB of RAM. Reasons to try: 8. Arch Linux Arch Linux is another distro that puts the user in control: the CD is 160MB and installs only a base system. From there you can choose what you need to install: desktop, server or whatever. Clearly not a distro for new users, with its spartan text installer and lack of graphical desktop. But if you know what you want, you can build a system to exactly match your needs. Want to boot from encrypted partitions, software RAID or LVM? Arch will do this, just select the relevant options when installing. Arch uses its own package management system called pacman, a command line program providing the usual facilities for installing, removing and handling dependencies. Arch also includes the tools to create your own packages. The official repository, has a big selection of packages, and is supplemented by the AUR community repository. If you use man more than the mouse, this is a distro worth investigating. If you want everything done with a few clicks, without knowing what is happening behind the scenes, this is not the distro for you. Reasons to try: 9. CentOS CentOS has a specific aim: enterprise use. A derivation of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, CentOS has taken the source code for RHEL (which, of course, is GPLed) and rebranded it. By removing all references to Red Hat this is done fully within the terms of Red Hat's redistribution requirements. Apart from the visual aspect, this is RHEL, but without the support contract. CentOS is for those that need a system designed for enterprise use, where stability and ease of maintenance are more important than 3D effects and support for the newest Wi- Fi hardware. CentOS users aren't left to fend for themselves, there is an active community in the CentOS forums and IRC. What you don't get is telephone support or guaranteed email response times; if you want those, buy a RHEL contract. Reasons to try: 10. PCLinuxOS PCLinuxOS is unusual among the distros here in that it did not start out as a distro. It evolved from a package repository for Mandrake to become a Live CD distro, and then gained an installer to become a fully fledged installable distro. PCLinuxOS still boots as a Live disc with the installer being run from the desktop. This method has been adopted by more distros now, most notably Ubuntu. We looked at PCLinuxOS 2007, which is the latest full release, but some of the packages are somewhat older than is some of the other distros with more recent release dates. PCLinuxOS 2008 is in development and may be available by the time you read this. This isn't a problem with PCLinuxOS, because the repositories generally contain the latest versions of packages, you don't have to wait for a new distro release to update. So although the CD installs KDE 3.5.6, you can upgrade to 3.5.8 with a few mouse clicks. As well as installing for the CD to your hard disk, PCLinuxOS has a tool to create a new Live CD from the contents of your hard disk, creating a custom CD is as easy as installing the software you need and running mklivecd. Reasons to try: 11. Sabayon Sabayon is based on Gentoo, but that is not like Ubuntu being based on Debian. Gentoo is a meta-distribution – instead of providing a selection of packages and an installer, it provides the tools to do everything yourself. Sabayon is the best-known example of a distribution built using Gentoo. This made it a curious combination of binaryand source-based distro as Sabayon didn't supply prebuilt packages except for those on the install discs. Updates, security fixes and new software still had to be compiled during installation. This will change with Sabayon 3.5, which will use its own Entropy package manager and have access to repositories of binary packages. We tried the first beta release of 3.5, so the repositories were limited, but providing binary packages for a distro built from Gentoo makes a lot of sense, otherwise you may as well use Gentoo directly. The Sabayon DVD works as a Live disc as well as the installer, and it was the first live disc distro to include a Compiz 3D desktop. The DVD boots to a customised KDE desktop, with an interesting variation on the launcher menu, although you may choose Gnome, Fluxbox or no desktop at all when installing. Reasons to try: 12. KNOPPIX The name Knoppix has become synonymous with live CDs, in the same way that Thermos is used for vacuum flasks or Biro for ball point pens. Knoppix was not the first Live CD, for example, SUSE had a demonstration live CD in the days before they allowed their distros to go on cover discs. Knoppix gained its reputation as the daddy of all live CDs because it was the first completely usable distro on a disc. What made it so good was its excellent hardware detection that would handle automatic, on-the-fly configuration when booted on almost any hardware. While this is taken for granted nowadays, it was unheard of before Knoppix, and you still have to go a long way to find a Linux Live CD that beats Knoppix on all fronts. Knoppix uses the KDE desktop and is now available on a DVD as well as a CD, giving a far greater selection of software. It can use a hard disk partition, floppy disk or USB key to hold the home directory, giving a portable desktop that also makes a useful recovery tool when things go wrong, especially as it can be used to rescue files from broken Windows systems too. If the software selection does not suit you, Knoppix is Debian at its heart and can be remastered to add or remove packages to suit your needs. Reasons to try: 13. Zenwalk Zenwalk is a derivative of Slackware. For several years previously, it used to be called Minislack, so you can probably guess that it is a small distro. Like Vector Linux that we used last month, Zenwalk is aimed as lower-powered machines. It is quite at home on a PII with 128MB of RAM. That's not to say you can't use it with a more modern specification, in which case it will absolutely fly; but there is no 64-bit version, for obvious reasons. Installation is quick and largely automated, especially if it is the only OS on the computer. Despite aiming at such a low minimum hardware specification, Zenwalk includes similar software to the other distros. Web browsing is handled by the IceWeasel rebranded Firefox and the desktop is the fast and efficient Xfce 4. You don't get OpenOffice.org, but you wouldn't want to run it on a PII with 128MB and of course there are no wobbly windows and spinning cubes on the desktop. This is a basic system in comparison with some of the others, especially SUSE and Mandriva with their all-encompassing control programs, but it is light and fast and ideal for low-end computers. Reasons to try: 14. Slackware Slackware is considered the original Linux distro. In fact there was Yggdrasil before it, but with a name that no one would pronounce, spell or even remember, it disappeared, leaving Slackware as the oldest surviving distro. When you start to install it, you could be forgiven for thinking that you had been transported back to the early nineties. The plain grey and blue text installer certainly looks primitive compared with, for example, SUSE's YaST, but it does the job quietly and efficiently. The same could be said for Slackware as a whole. While other distros try to add their own touches all over the place, Slackware tries to stay as close to the original versions of the software as possible. You won't find heavily patched kernels and customised desktop menu systems here, just the standard software that the authors intended. The minimalist approach may mean fewer bells and whistles, but can also mean a reduction in groans of frustration too, as the simpler system has less to go wrong. It also gets you closer to the system, there's an old saying, that applies to a lot more than Red Hat these days – "Use Red Hat and you learn about Red Hat, use Slackware and you learn about Linux." Reasons to try:
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