Which linux os?

[R/C Pilot]

I want to duel boot a linux os on my new Laptop, but I am having trouble deciding which one.

I have considered Fedora Core 3 or SuSe 9.2-9.3

The laptop is an Alienware Area 51m and I want the os to boot off of an external Firewire drive as Alienware requires you to have only windows installed on the machine for repair under the warranty.

[ack ack]

slackware, DSL, ubuntu, gentoo, and openbsd are the ones i've heard the best things about and have seen recommended that most.

[Malatory]

Redhat and SuSe are good Distros and have good installing scripts / gui's plus they are easyer to just pick up and learn.

Quick Over view (Falls in IMHO)
Redhat - Fedora Core (3 or soon to be 4) Nice for beginers and is taking the step in unclude stronger security mesures in there development (SELinux in included as an install option).

SuSe - Germany Based Redhat - Another one that is good for beiginers.

SLackware: oldest Distro out there and still uses the old school install / packaging. Strong system to use and updating is not as easy as FC or Suse. packaging uses Tar files and requires a bit more know how at the CLI level.

Gentoo: Nice and Fast but takes a long time to get a system up and running fully. As you spend a lot of time re-compliling apps / Kernal for your system. Updated can be done in the background. For a truely Fast machine you will need to know a lot about your system and programming so you can set things up correctly.

Debian: Nice install and good updating (automation of this is the easyest of all systems) using the BSD format for system files (All others listed above use the SysV).

I currently Run Slackware 10.1 and FC3 on 2 of my machines (FC3 is my Mail server / IRC server / folding) The Slackware machine is used for Unix coding and cross platform compliing. My Upgraded to Debian as most ARM processor system run a variant of debian.

[Malatory]

Dup Post .. Sorry

[public_eyesore]

i run fedora core 3 and love it, i still dont know how to install programs tho, but i looks so cool and for some reason the firefox runs faster for me than on windows

[ZeD]

Debian? and mandrake looked nice the few times I've used them

[Malatory]

Biggest things is. Get one installed and spend time learning how to use it. Not all things are same as windows but with some time spent with Linux you can find ways to do most of the things done in windows, can be done in linux as well (Few exceptions)

[Cymae]

I had debian, and i didn't like it very much...and redhat's gone commerical i'm afraid

[fiendskull9]

old post i know, but i have to correct some things

and openbsd

BSD isnt linux, its Berkley Software Development (berkley college branch) that got ahold of the unix source (i beleive they bought it from AT&T for awhile, before it went to Novell) and developed a kernel, widely used on server for along time (in the age where OS/2 and MacOS were the primary desktop operating systems)

-clay

[Cevinzol]

This is an old thread and you're correction isn't really a correction.
Maybe this diagram will help
OpenBSD isn't BSD. Its a "BSD-based UNIX-like operating system"
So BSD is a deriviative of UNIX.
Linux is also a derivative of Unix in that it was designed to behave like Unix. But Linux was desinged from the ground up independantly of Unix. Linus Torvalds along with the GNU project released the O/S source code to the public so that anyone could improve on it.

Unix and BSD are Liscensed Operating systems.
Linux is open source.
OpenBSD is open sourse.
ALL of these systems are derivatives of UNIX.

[If I could use a religious comparison - because some people are very zealous about their O/S. Its like saying Lutherans aren't Baptist. Which is true but they are both Protestants which is a subdivision of Christianity.]