Distro Suggestions

[quido]

I'm looking for your suggestions on linux distributions to try out as a virtual machine. I'm not looking to do anything fancy - I only use ssh, sftp, gedit, and g++. I'm just curious to hear which distributions you guys enjoy so I can maybe try one or two of them out and get a feel. I've used Ubuntu 10.04 LTS for a long time and have tried Kubuntu and Fedora briefly in the past.

[Bokke]

Linux Mint is the usual recommendation. If you've used Ubuntu for a long time most things should be the same only with a far more polished UI (in my opinion). Its the distro that many old Ubuntu users moved to after the Unity release.

You can grab it with MATE, Cinnamon, KDE or Xfce. I personally use MATE or Cinnamon most the time, but you can check out the individual projects to see which interface you like more.

http://www.linuxmint.com/download.php

If you're really brave and want to mess around (and have time to kill) ArchLinux is a lot of fun and has a lot of documentation but its also a lot of work.

[Lyssia]

Gentoo

[Tiddlywinks]

Why are you installing Unix?

If you want to learn things and dick around with skills that may be practical in a real-world production environment then install some flavor of RHEL/zlinux/AIX. The only thing I can think of that's big and uses ubuntu atm is Stackato and that's pretty new, plus sounds like you already have a handle on that.

[Tiddlywinks]

Should also mention that Fedora used to be my go-to favorite, but over the last 4 or 5 years it's become really watered down and more focused on user desktop graphics and making itself look shiny to "compete" with Ubuntu or whatever.

I would recommend CentOS over it for any serious tinkering if you can't get your hands on RHEL.

[bomaroast]

Debian Stable for a rock solid machine. Packages tend to be older. Make sure to use backports and upstream repositories wherever possible. (WINE has a debian stable repo so you always have the most current WINE package)
Ubuntu LTS or Debian Testing for more up to date packages - but you lose the extreme stability.
Arch Linux if you want to stay current with all upstream vendors. That is to say: the distribution does not mess with the packages at all, they just throw them into the package manager and distribute.
CentOS if you need redhat style linux.
Plain 'ole Ubuntu if you're using a laptop.

[SamwiseRed]

OP clearly looking to box/hack on p99. should just ban imo.

[r00t]

imo its all the same ass fucking shit just different package managers, so unless you want to deal with obscure/broken packages go with ubuntu since it has the biggest community for up-to-date packages & shit

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w/e you go with, slap xfce on it obvs, FUCK KDE (I like Qt > .NET tho)

[Nikon]

Linux Mint is okay. I use it on one of my laptops and it seems to run relatively clean for most basic applications, but I've run into a few hardware/driver issues that had to be manually fixed. For servers, I use 10.04 LTS Ubuntu and CentOS primarily. I've had real good luck with 10.04 on my Mumble/Apache server at home and CentOS has been solid for over two years on my work network with minimal maintenance and security updates. I also agree with bomaroast that a good Debian Stable box is a damn good box.

[Swish]

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