Which Linux Distro And Why?

When you tell someone, "I'm going to buy a car," you usually hear, "Which one?" Ford, Toyota, Mitsubishi, Honda, Saturn? Two-door, four-door, minivan? And so on.

Likewise, if you say "I want to run Linux," you'll get the same question: Which one? There's no one "Linux" in the same sense that there's no one "car." There are things common among all cars as there are among all Linux distributions: All cars have an engine, and all Linux distributions share the Linux kernel and many of the GNU utilities.

But that's where the similarities begin and end. There are easily hundreds, if not thousands, of Linux distributions that are maintained and updated regularly, many of which are tailored for extremely specific needs.

Think I'm kidding about speciialization? There's even a flavor of Linux dedicated to the Asian strategy game Go, called Hikarunix.

Who's to say what's worth running? With such a bewildering variety of choices, it's tempting to simply opt for the familiarity of Windows or even the Mac, both of which come in only a couple of basic variations.

The truth is, you don't need to drive yourself up one wall and down another choosing a distribution. Odds are you don't have to pick from more than one of three or four, tops, depending on your requirements and inclinations.

Rather than just run down a catalog of distributions (something you can easily get at Distrowatch), I've taken about 20 of the most popular and useful distros and grouped them by the way they answer specific user needs. If you read the header of a given section (e.g., "I want something simple for an older machine") and find yourself nodding in agreement, chances are the distributions discussed there will be what you need. "I Just Want To Get Started With Linux"

In some ways this may well be the easiest demand to satisfy despite the fact that newcomers to Linux face both a learning curve and the inconvenience of porting their work environment from Windows.

Small wonder that Ubuntu -- easily the one distribution out there that is becoming a household name -- is designed to overcome both of those difficulties. Users with an existing Windows installation can automatically import their documents, settings, and Internet bookmarks. They can also try out Ubuntu in a variety of nondestructive ways: booting the CD directly; dual-booting with Windows; or installing Ubuntu directly on a Windows partition. Ubuntu's design, and its community of users, make it a good place to start for those who don't want to sacrifice productivity.

Ubuntu is hardly the only starter distribution, although it's certainly the most well-known and significant. Linux Mint (itself an Ubuntu derivative), PCLinuxOS, SimplyMEPIS and Mandriva also follow the "it should just work" philosophy, each with their own variant approaches to usability, package management and migration from Windows.

Another distribution that's become recognized as a remarkably good place to start is openSUSE 11.1. The community-supported edition of Novell's commercially-produced distribution SUSE, openSUSE sports a great many usability advances, like a searchable main menu that's comparable to the one in Windows Vista. It, too, sports a throw-it-in-and-go live disc for testing.

"I know What I'm Doing; I Don't Need Much Hand-Holding"

If you've already gotten your feet wet with Linux or trust in your ability to learn quickly, there's an array of distributions that will be more suited to your abilities without leaving you totally in the dust. Red Hat Linux has become an almost de facto choice for servers and infrastructure, and its community-supported distribution Fedora in turn has its own strong following. It doesn't have as many of the upgrade or acculturation goodies as Ubuntu, but it's still easy to set up and sports many of the same attractive desktop features. Linus Torvalds himself recently mentioned he's more often than not a Fedora user when it comes to Linux distros (as is the author of this article). Fedora 10 is the most current edition, but there's an alpha-test of version 11 for the stout-hearted.

Then there's Debian, which might well be called the ur-distro, as so many other distributions (Ubuntu included) are based on it in some form. Some dislike it for its glacial development cycle, but others appreciate the fact that its stable editions remain as-is for a good long time, giving others something reliable to build upon. The most recent stable version is 4.0, but a 5.0 edition is in the works, although no release date has been set.

If distributions were houses, Slackware would be The House That Patrick Volkerding Built. Or maybe it's a family restaurant that since 1993 has been serving up home-cooked cuisine -- er, code -- to the Linux lovers of the world. Whatever the metaphor, Slackware's earned a rep for being simple, stable, and flexible. It's a good distribution for those who want to take more control of things, and who want to learn more about Linux without being thrown completely to the wolves.

"I Want Something Simple For An Older Machine"

Sometimes, you just want the basics. Linux started with the basics, and it's remained true to its roots in that there are no end of distributions that just give you the basics. These distributions boot and run from USB or disc media, or even entirely from memory (depending on how much RAM is available). I should note that running from memory or from a removable drive is in itself a security measure: if you're paranoid (or just cautious), you can run it from a USB thumbdrive and never leave anything behind on the computer. Puppy Linux was and is one of my favorites, a distribution that's not only tiny and lightweight but remarkably full-featured. Now in its 4.1.2 incarnation, it crams most everything people need into a mere 100MB package, with additional software available separately and a wide variety of community-remixed editions for even more-specific needs. It's also shaped up as the near-perfect way to rejuvenate older notebooks, since it requires very little in the way of space or system resources to run well.

DamnSmallLinux 4.4, or DSL for short, more than lives up to the name. A mere 50MB, it'll run on a machine as low-end as a 486DX with 16BM of RAM (let me check the closet…) and installs to a PC as a Debian-based distribution. As with Puppy it can be used on low-end hardware, but it's also often used as a rescue / recovery system, or as a way to get a machine booted and running some variety of operating system in a hurry.

Also in the same vein is TinyMe, a cut-down remix of PCLinuxOS; the slimmed-down versions of Ubuntu, Xubuntu and <="" a="">; and the still-under-wraps but already-remarkable Moblin, a distro aimed at netbooks running the Atom processor. Xubuntu is probably the most mature and widely tested of the bunch, but Moblin boots lightning-fast and already has tremendous potential.

"I'm Running A Server"

Bacon and eggs; Laurel and Hardy; Linux and servers. The server world is where Linux proved itself, and continues to prove itself with great aplomb. It's also the arena where the choices are fairly straightforward.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux, or RHEL, remains one of the most common and widely-supported choices for a server -- although unlike the vast majority of other distributions here, it's only available with a Red Hat support contract (although there is a 30-day trial version as well, and the community-supported Fedora build). An interesting spinoff of RHEL is CentOS, a build derived directly from RHEL's source code but available for free (albeit without official support). A number of companies with strong internal Linux teams have opted for CentOS over RHEL as a cost-saving measure, and have broadly modified the operating system for their own internal needs. In short, if you've already got experience with Red Hat, CentOS makes a good choice.

Another server which has garnered a good deal of positive attention recently is one derived from Ubuntu -- named, appropriately enough, Ubuntu Server Edition. The Wikimedia Foundation was impressed enough with USE that they elected to consolidate their servers on it, and unlike RHEL it's available free without a support contract.

"I Want To Do Something More Advanced"

If you're a born tinkerer, a programmer, or just a naturally curious sort, you'll probably want to do more advanced things with Linux than just compose e-mails and sort pictures. This is where the truly hack-tastic distros come into the picture. They may not always be user-friendly, but for the dedicated Linux devotee they can provide the kind of fun that previous generations of electronics buffs got from a Heathkit or a trip to Radio Shack.

The best first place to start is probably Gentoo--the "do it yourself" distribution. It allows you to install what you want and compile it all from scratch exactly the way you want it. It's absolutely not for the casual user, since it typically requires a fair amount of work to get running, but that's part of the learning experience. Another variant of Gentoo, Sabayon, sports a more complete out-of-the-box experience but maintains full compatibility with Gentoo and is equally tweakable. In much the same vein is Linux From Scratch, probably the ultimate "learn-as-you-go" experience for Linux. As the name implies, you build the entire distribution from the ground up with guidance from the documentation -- a sort of hobby-kit version of Linux. This is by far the least user-friendly way to do it, but LFS is unmatched for sheer get-your-hands-dirty, low-level exposure.

"I'm In Trouble"

Messed something up, did you? Maybe you've got an unbootable system, or you're worried that a virus has gobbled up your hard drive whole. In such a case, a Linux distro designed for rescue and recovery makes it possible to access what's on the hard drive without needing to boot the machine, copy off anything crucial, and perhaps also perform repairs.

Most any distribution that can boot from a live CD can be used as a rescue disc, such as the small-and-light distributions described above. My preferred favorite is Puppy Linux, since it boots fast and has a great many common tools available from a single and logically-organized menu. DamnSmallLinux also works well, and is even more suited to low-memory or oddball environments. For the more technically inclined, though, there's SystemRescueCD, jammed with all kinds of advanced tools.

Also worth mentioning is Clonezilla, Linux's answer to Norton Ghost, which allows you to image partitions or entire systems. This can be done either as a backup measure or as a way to clone (as the name implies) one system to multiple machines. Final Thoughts

A common criticism -- and a justifiable one -- is that the staggering number of distributions out there hinders Linux adoption or makes choice difficult. Yes, in the sense that there is no one authoritative Linux distribution (although there are contenders for that particular throne), and this creates a fragmentation of effort amongst different parties.

But no, in the sense that advances made in one distribution are quickly adopted by others. That and the total number of distribution choices you need to make are usually no more than two or three, since most distributions are created to address a specific need to class of user. In the long run, Linux's pluralities may eventually yield to a much larger common base than just the kernel -- but for now, it's a world of plenty, and the choices are yours to make.