[colug-432] Introduction and distro preference question

[Dan Kaiser]

Hi everyone,

I'm fairly new to Linux (I've dabbled for the past four years or so) and
newer still to the group (joined in late December.)  I was looking forward
to the attending the meeting this week, but I've been fighting a nasty cold
so I thought it better to sit this one out and not sneeze on anyone.  If
anyone has notes from the scripting talk I'd love to see what was covered.

I have a question for the group.  I've recently purchased a new-to-me
ThinkPad X220 with the intention of making it my primary machine running
Linux full time.  I used to triple boot my MacBook Pro, but I found myself
in OS X most of the time, and while I tried virtualization, I couldn't
really make myself "work" inside a virtual machine.  Now that my wife's
laptop died and she started using the MBP more and more, I saw it as an
opportunity to finally make the jump.

I'm most familiar with the Debian family of distros (Debian itself, all
flavors of Ubuntu, Mint, CrunchBang, etc.) and I know APT fairly well.
 Usually I've been trying to find the best disro to get ancient,
second-hand hardware to run effectively, so I've also tried out TinyCore,
DSL, Puppy, Bohdi, and Antix as well.  Now I have a newer machine capable
of running just about anything well, and I'd like to pick something that
will use the hardware to its full potential.

I've been hesitant to stray from APT package management, as that is all
I've ever really used, but I read many good things about Arch (and others
based on it.) I've read also that if you're at all interested in a Linux
profession (something I'm open to down the line) you really should only be
using RHEL/CentOS or Fedora.

So my question is what distro do you recommend for someone in my situation?
 I'm not trying to start a flame war, and I understand there is no "best"
distro, only the one that works best for each individual or in each
situation.  I'm just looking for opinions from folks much more experienced
than me about what you use (or have used) and the pros/cons of that choice.

Thanks in advance,

-Dan

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a
habit." - Aristotle
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