[Nottingham] distro chance

[Andrew Mason]

I'll put my vote in for Slackware. 

Its easy to install, though not very flashy. It comes with reasonably up to date
packages by default 2.4 Gnome, 3.14 KDE, although 9.1 is getting a little old
now. However it is extreemly easy to install packages (installpkg blah.tgz).
Assuming that you are downloading most of the packages from ftp.slackware.com or
a mirror you shouldn't have any issues with dependancies as any files will be on
the cd. It includeds Java, MP3 support etc.. out of the box so to speak, and it
is IMHO one of the quicker linux distro's. It plays well with source packages as
the .tgz files are just binary tars which when extracted in the root dir put the
files in the appropriate places. You can also do ./configure, make, checkinstall
and it will add it to the package db automagically so to remove it you can just
do "removepkg blah". Or you can use slapt-get, swaret or a host of other package
management tools to get deps etc.. Its 2.6 ready, and KDE 3.2.2 X.org  AND
xfree86 4.4 are both in -current, although X.org is the preffered X now. Its
very stable, secure and it doesn't mess with packages or kernels. There are no
added patches or compile time optomisations to either. Its clean, and it doesn't
try to hold your hand and tell you what to do. The #slackware channel is very
friendly and assuming you have googled and read relevant man pages will help you
out in a flash. If they can't give me a buzz and I probably can :)

Plus with Slackware you will learn Linux, with out realising it. You can quite
easily go through mandrake, fedora etc and barely touch the command line or any
of the fun things.  

Or give Debian a try, also a good distro but i am sure there are lots of Debian
advocates out there so i'll give them a turn.  

Andrew