"All of the reviews were done on the same hardware: an inexpensive Linux box purchased at Frys Electronics. It came with an 800MHz VIA processor, 128MB DRAM, 30GB hard drive, 52X ATAPI CD-ROM drive, and a mainboard with built-in AC97 Codec sound, 3D Graphics Accelerator video, SiS630E chipset, and a 10BaseT/100BaseTX NIC. To that we added a Sampo Alphascan 711S 17-inch monitor. There were no hardware failures or issues during the reviews, and all the distributions performed adequately.
"We compared the distributions in five categories: installation, connectivity, security, software maintenance, and (free or included) support. Where prices are shown, we used the retail price of the version of the distribution we tested. The average of these five scores was used as the final grade..."
