What's your Linux distribution of choice and why?

[Cytherian]

Of course, this is the Vista forum so anybody hanging out here uses Vista, enjoys Vista, or just feels compelled to help others out with Vista.

I haven't really used Linux much at all, other than Red Hat and Mangrove many years ago. Ubuntu seems to be a very popular distribution and the choice of several folks here when doing system troubleshooting outside of Windows (like hard drive issues). So I'm wondering how many of you like to use Linux and if so, what distribution of it do you run and why? Apparently there are still a number of Linux variations, as well as earlier or current versions of each, like Ubuntu, Fedora, openSUSE, and CentOS to name a few.

Unfortunately, there appears to be a number of variations based on a given distribution as well. For example, there's LuninuX with it's foundation from Ubuntu but having it's own customized shell. There's even Lubuntu, with variations off of that as well (like Peppermint). Sheesh, it's confusing!

I'd probably select vanilla Ubuntu straight off, only because it's so well received and user friendly, but yet I've seen and heard about advanced users finding the restrictions frustrating. What I'd like is one that has a decent user friendly interface yet also exposes some decent power to the user if they want it, while at the same time providing very good hardware compatibility. I don't want to be spending countless hours trying to track down drivers if I can help it. Fedora looks interesting, as a descendant of Red Hat. But would openSUSE be a more useful choice? I know it's probably best to just try them out individually, but I'd like to prioritize this based on opinions here.

 

[ilikefree]

I use Linux Mint. Don't really know why so that's not much help to you.
I like that it's small,easily fits a small bootable USB and gives me access to windows files when repairing peoples computers.
That's all I use it for and wouldn't swap Vista for it.

 

[Golden]

LinuxMint is probably the most useful for me - having nver used any Linux distribution before, I found just so easy to use.

 

[tom982]

I use Ubuntu and BackTrack (based on Ubuntu). I know it might be frowned upon using BackTrack because of the type of packages it includes, but I really enjoy penetration testing and seeing how fast passwords can be cracked etc. (just test files, for the record). I can't say I'm particularly good with it though!

When I get round to it, I'll dual boot this PC with Mint. I really like the XFCE interface

 

[Cytherian]

Good to hear all the enthusiasm about Linux Mint. I'll definitely put that in the top 3 of my Linux distribution try-out list. Thanks!