[Novices] Ten Distro Reviews

[Adam Tauno Williams]

> http://www.linuxforums.org/reviews/overview_of_the_ten_major_linux_distributions.html

I can think of about three or four distros that qualify as "major", but
whatever.

"The Microsoft Windows operating system is developed and released by a
single company."

Has anyone else read this review -
http://internetweek.cmp.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=183702028 - of
the *SIX* flavors of Windows Vista?  Groan,  I though Home vs. Pro was
pointless and annoying.

"Debian... Cons: Slow release cycle"

Slow?  Glacial might be more accurate.  And the whole stable/unstable
thing... ugh.

"Slackware... Pros: speed and performance."

And the data to backup this claim is where?  Lots of people think if you
compile stuff straight up that it is faster,  which has as much basis as
thinking events always come in threes or that seeing a black cat causes
bad luck.  Same glibc version, same kernel version, same hardware is
almost certain to give the same performance - or so flippin' close that
nobody sane cares.

"Suse.. Cons: Speed and performance"

See above.  And what is "speed" vs. "performance"?

"Ubuntu...  Ubuntu aims to be an innovative and dynamic general purpose
distribution which tackles issues that were not addressed by other
distributions"

And those issues would be?  I installed it,  it is a nice distro, I saw
nothing novel.

The most novel thing I see coming is ia gstreamer version complemented
by a set of commercial plugins to *EASILY* and legally support
proprietary formats like encrypted DVDs and MP3 files.  For the LINUX
desktop multimedia & printer feedback are the two things I head about
all the time.  (The later will be dealt with by CUPS 1.2 hopefully later
this year,  the former will be dealt with by SuSe 10.1 on April 25th).
Neither of these things seem distro specific.
http://www.fluendo.com/products.php?product=plugins  

Mepis, Gentoo, Xandros, etc... are not mainstream.  Does major ==
mainstream?