“You’ve decided it’s time to get a new Linux distribution. Maybe
it’s your first shot at Linux, maybe it’s time to upgrade, or maybe
you’re just a little bored. As soon as you look into the very
crowded Linux distribution space you are immediately besieged with
questions; Do you download or buy a CD-ROM? Do you buy the CD-ROM
in a book or a shrink wrapped package? Do you buy the original
distribution or one of those distributions that is “based” on
another?”
“Linux Magazine labs has looked at eight of the most popular
Linux distributions, all of which are available in either a
free download version or in a shrink-wrapped box. We’ve poked and
prodded at the shrink-wrapped versions of Caldera OpenLinux
2.3, Corel Linux, Debian GNU/Linux 2.1, Linux-Mandrake 6.1, Red Hat
Linux 6.1, Slackware 7.0, SuSE Linux 6.3, and TurboLinux 4.0. —
all with the aim of giving you some sense of what might be the
distribution for you.”
“Rating each of the different distributions proved to be a
thorny task. Different people use Linux for different reasons. Some
people don’t care for a GUI-based installation. Others demand it.
We addressed this discrepancy by dividing our findings into three
categories: Novice, Desktop, and Server. The ratings are restricted
to the standard distributions we evaluated and do not take into
account other specialized variations of the products.”