No I’m not joking.  I have actually done a full install (not in a virtual machine) of all of the above Linux distributions.  A few of them in the ‘toyed briefly’ list lasted all of a few hours before being wiped off my machine for something that didn’t make me want to tear my hair out.  (Mythbuntu was really awesome, and I would LOVE to set up a dedicated DVR box with it, but it is less useful as a desktop distribution, so it came off quickly)

Keep in mind that I would classify myself as a ‘novice-to-intermediate’ Linux user.  I’m nowhere near writing my own programs, or contributing to the kernel.  I DO, however, feel crippled if I don’t have a linux terminal handy (I usually prefer command-line over gui for administrative tasks), and feel very comfortable following extensive ‘how-to’ documentation just to get a simple task accomplished (which fortunately is becoming a less common occurence in Linux).

Having said that, here’s my take on all of those distros. In my experience, NO ONE *gets* the end-user experience like Ubuntu and Ubuntu-derived distros.  For the hardware I’ve tested it on (quite a few different configurations of laptops and desktops) and the software packages I’ve tried out, it ‘just works’ better than any other distro.  Quite a few of the flavors are *close* but miss the mark here and there.  In fact, with Ubuntu, I rarely ever have to go searching for drivers (which used to be the longest process of re-installing Windows).  I also have not found any other distribution that has such an extensive software repository.  If it’s a Linux program, it’s probably in the Ubuntu repository.  For those programs that for some reason AREN’T in the repos, the developers almost always host their own repository for Ubuntu.  It’s a simple matter of adding their repo as a resource for the package manager, and then ‘apt-get install’ing the software.  I haven’t seen that type of support for the other repositories.

Speaking of the repositories, I’d like to point out what I feel is one of the greatest advantages of using Linux (especially one that has everything you need in the repository).  Since I use a package manager to install ALL of my software (including the operating system itself), I am able to very simply update ALL of my software with a few simple commands.  Any time a new version of ANY of the software I have installed is released, I get the update immediately.  I don’t have to go looking for new versions of my software separately, it just comes to me, automagically!

Well, I’ve been enjoying using Crunchbang for a while, but just read today about Zenwalk 6.0.  It’s a distro based on Slackware, but it uses the XFCE interface I love so much.  Version 6.0 has incorporated the brand newest XFCE 4.6.  I downloaded the ISO today, and I think we all know what I’ll be doing this evening.