Hi, I'm planning to install linux on my laptop, but I don't know which distribution is the best at this time. I hear a lot positive reactions about redhat, mandrake en suse. Also freeBSD seems to get very popular. But what's the best choice?? Thanx in advance...

If you don't know, you're probably new to Linux and will want to use Mandrake because it's newbie-friendly. And for clarification, FreeBSD is UNIX, not Linux.

Thanx. I'm an experienced programmer and want to use linux to expand my horizon. Are there nice compilers available and visual environments? By the way, I know FreeBSD is Unix. But I was interested about what you guys prefer, linux or FreeBSD? (it's also compatible) I have not much Linux experience, but I have lots of computer (OS) knowledge. What distro is then most suitable? Thanx again..

Slackware is the best of both worlds. It's Linux that uses BSD init scripts. It is the original and most Unix like distro. Definitely the best Distro for development. It is Really easy to use because it doesn't try to hide the system with bells, whistles, and customized configurations. It's all tried and true standards. Mandrake is great if you don't want to get too intimate with your system. Its good for newbies not newbie developers. EvilEntity is like the Eye Candy version of slackware but is doesn't support laptops.

OK, I will take a look at the specs of your adviced distros. I hope I will learn lots of new stuff, great!!

Linux starter Both linux and freebsd have numerous programming environments. (Kloss, my appologies, i am not a programmer:-( ) python, perl, tcl/tk (not sure may have them backwards) for you to work in and with. There are many differences in the two OS's. One thing that may be relevant here is... freeBSD can run linux binaries but not the otherway around. As for GUI's they both have the standard battery of UI's including Gnome and KDE. (I just saw on the freeBSD site that porting for Gnome apps is going to be faster with their new comittter.) Linux-Mandrake is probably, like Jake said, them most user friendly to newbies. and Kloss is exactly right about slackware. freeBSD 2.x something was my first venture into the unix world and slack was my first linux. One thing to check with slack.. it used to be somewhat hard to upgrade, tho that may have changed. You will also become very intimate with your hardware in slack. As for laptop usage, i believe most major distro's of linux (RedHat, SuSE, Mandrake, Slackware etc..) will work as well as freebsd. Jeff