Which distro is for me?

Fedora Core III, I'd say is for you...

gentoo is good, as is any debian-based distro, ubuntu being my favorite so far.

Debian , Gentoo , Slackware

pick one of the above bad boys

I say Debian or Gentoo.

Barebones gentoo is a pain to install for some, so you might want to opt for VidaLinux ($30, but there is a free version). it is in ver 1.1 right now but 1.2 is comming out soon and it is looking very good. It is still basically gentoo, still uses portage, but the installation won't cost you an arm and a leg, it uses an easy to use Red Hat's anaconda installer taking all of 1 hour tops to build all the packages (time based on what i got on my laptop, my P3 866mhz desktop took a bit longer).

As far as debian goes, there is Ubuntu (or Kubuntu for KDE-ers). There is also Mepis which is good, but much more unstable in my experience than Ubuntu.

Linspire-easy to use, pretty fast, for laptops.etc
I use Gentoo and I'm some sort of newby too. It is a pain in the ass to slove some things, but still preety fast and nice. I'm loving it (i hate mcdonalds)

Im using Suse Professional 9.1, and i am a complete Linux newbie myself. Though all of my friends use Linux, I can still manage on my own for the most part and KDE is good GUI. The only pain in the arse is setting up wireless on the laptop. Good Luck when you get there.

just outta curiosity, can you game on a linux machine?

Yes you can game, take a look at cedega.com for more info. It is not a windows box obviously, but it can hold its own.

Suse- Good general purpose distro, Good choice for newbies.
Gentoo- Takes a LONG time to install, great distro very customizable, good choice for compiliation
Ubuntu- Very good lighter weight than Suse, sturdy Distro Debian-based. Probably would be my choice for most general purposes boxes nowadays.

Seablade

If you don't mind putting in the grunt work, then I would recommend gentoo. Whereas if you know nothing about linux, yet you want the box up and running in < 30 minutes, then try kubuntu or ubuntu depending on your kde/gnome preference (Ubuntu though is far more stable than Kubuntu).

if you want gentoo but want to avoid the gruntwork, check out Vida Linux OS 1.1 (1.2 comming out soon). It is gentoo that uses Red Hat's Annaconda Installer...making the install quick, easy, and painless.

If you want debian, i stick to my Ubuntu/Kubuntu recommendation

Ok.. seems the majority like Gentoo and Ubuntu. I've installed Gentoo before, but it was a console-only system.

Seems like the major difference is that Gentoo is a lot more tedious, especially waiting for things to compile, and Ubuntu is easier and faster to install.

So what's the advantage of Gentoo over Ubuntu?

P.S. I personally don't think the performance advantages (or l33t-factor ) of compiling things from source are significant enough to justify spending hours doing that. So my quesiton is more about the functional/usability type differences...

If you have an i686 architecture Yoper is the fastest for it, http://yoper.com

Take a peek at Xandros Linux. If you are new to linux this is the bridge that moves windows users to linux

yoper is fast but the last time i tried it (less than 1/2 year ago) it was buggy up the arse and had weak hardware support.

the benefits of gentoo:
-l33t f4ct0r
-smoother, more stable software because its compiled on your box for your box
-huge tree of ebuilds (almost any software you can think of)

benefits of ubuntu:
-quick-ish text=based (but easy) install
-(when sources.list has been edited) there are repositories with all the packages you need
-fantastic hardware support (wifi and everything)
-pretty stable and solid
-no need to wait hours to install a piece of software

Well i think he needs Fedora Core 3...

Now me... I build mine from scratch... Thats right LFS baby... My distro is better than anything you guys have... Hahahah! Heck i get a better fps in my distro than in windows...

if i had an available box that wasn't a dog (ughh...233mhz with 64mb ram) and a crapload of time, i'd like to try LFS, however for now..i will stick to my vlos (desktop) and ubuntu (laptop)


and *maybe* familiar project on my pocket pc (when i get it in june)

I was slightly dissatisfied with Ubuntu due to my need to run multiple UML instances (User-Mode Linux, basically running linux on top of Linux). I ran into some weirdness/bugginess with the latest kernel panicking on me due to gam_somethingorother, and the whole Gnome-focus on all the utilities blew.

Particularly printing. Ubuntu cripples the CUPS GUI so you have to use their utility in order to do printer settings, and it just irritates the hell out of me that I couldn't use the KDE printer dialog (which, IMHO, is light-years ahead of the printconf gui in Ubuntu or Redhat).

So I blew away Ubuntu and tried FC3.

Never again. Here's a tip: SELinux is BAD FOR YOUR HEALTH if you want to run FC3 and aren't running it specifically to get experience with SELinux. You can turn the option off, and things clear up, but man, is it annoying getting there. I'm thinking I want to install it on an old desktop just to learn the ins and outs of SELinux.

Hardware support on FC3 blows.

It wouldn't let me set native resolution on my 1920x1200 screen with the generic driver, and the "nv" that comes with it for X didn't believe my Geforce Go 6800 is an Nvidia card. So I downloaded the Nvidia driver, to discover that they don't include a compiler in the workstation install. You'd think with over 3GB of disk space taken, they'd have gcc. But nope.

Sound card worked. Woot.

Unlike Ubuntu, they don't include ipw2200 in their kernel sources, so you're SOL on wireless cards until you roll your own kernel.

And the gnome-focus on all their little administrative widgets, along with the library dependencies, when I'm a KDE person, made me just gag on the install. I've only allocated about 10GB of my drive, including swap, to Linux, and Fedora Core 3 will easily suck up half of that or more.

My one-day experiment with Fedora Core 3 reminded me of why I put up with having a system that doesn't work right for the first 3 days running Gentoo. I don't want to lose gobs of disk space to crap I won't use.

Then again, I've just tried installing Gentoo on this box, and it's no picnic either. gentoo-sources doesn't include ipw2200 either (though, bizarrely, the live CD does, though it doesn't actually make it a usable network interface), and following the usual "out of the box" instructions using Gentoo makes for a kernel that panics because it can't find /dev/sda6. I think it's a problem with a udev vs. devfsd setting, but I haven't looked at it closely enough.

On the plus side, recent kernels ostensibly include support for the SD card reader on my laptop. So I'm hopeful

Ubuntu was a breeze to install on a Dell 9300. If you're into Gnome, and can stand to do things the "way it wants it done", it's probably the perfect distro at the moment for an i9300.

But some old-timers just like doing stuff the hard way

Well so far I like the sound of Ubuntu, especially for a laptop, but I prefer KDE to Gnome. So what do people think of kubuntu?

kubuntu is basically ubuntu in every single way but 1, it uses KDE vs Gnome. It is all prefferance at this point and 1 is no better than the other, they are both fanastic, solid, fast, full-featured (with a bit of setup) distros.