Preference Distro(s)

What distro do you prefer and do you have preference for specific tasks (i.e. different distros for varying computer usage like gaming, server, etc)?

CentOS for production

Gentoo for something interesting to do

Fedora for the latest and greatest features

Ubuntu looks interesting but they better get it together with Debian becuase they are floundering

Debian is solid but needs to speed up their releases to keep up with the times

FreeBSD has never interested me much

Solaris is too boring

Open Solaris sort of interests me

OS X for intel x86, now there's something interesting to compete in the marketplace

I have a
pentium II (dont know the speed),
128mb ram
3-4 gb harddisk
computer.

which Distro would you Recommend for this? And, do you know any text-based distros that would be fun to try?

i'd prly say go for like, FreeBSD or Slackware or possibly Debian.
you'd wanna check the minimum system requirements, but you wouldn't have a problem with FreeBSD for sure. or slackware..
debian

i run kanotix, its a nice balance of a desktop OS with good device support, and a server.

yeh, but these are minimum requirements, you sure it wont lag?

what are you trying to do with it? it'll be better than what you'll get out of Windows.. and i'd say with slackware there definitely won't be lag, those requirements are pretty down there.. lol

Personally I use RedHat/Fedora. I've been using RedHat ever since '96, so I'm pretty comfortable with it. It may not be "the best" out there, but it's the best for my needs.

I use fedora too. I've tried a bunch of distro's and didn't ever like them as well as Fedora. SuSE 9.3 came close but it just wasn't quite there.. and then v10 didn't want to install so i gave up on it :]

heh, I don't know what I was thinking

Myself.. I am an Ubuntu fan. I have this running on my laptop and it works flawlessly. I've gotten Wine to run on it and run Diablo IIx, I've gotten VMware workstation to run on it and installed photoshop on my virtual Windows XP. It is, in my opinion, the best distribution.

Mandrake/Mandriva/whatever they are calling it now would be my second choice, I used that for a while before switching to Ubuntu.

For me with production I use OpenBSD just because of their great code auditing effort.

For a desktop I sort of migrate a bit, I started off with SuSe and I really liked it for its ease of use but I dislike KDE and Gnome just cause they're big. I installed Fluxbox etc on it but I still didn't like it as much.

Switched to Gentoo, I liked it a lot for its configurability, etc but I got tired of the whole compiling thing, and I didn't really need that optimization.

Now using Ubuntu, its not as configurable out of the box as Gentoo, but its workable since its based on Debian and it with apt its pretty easy to install stuff. I'm still playing around with it but I'll probably stick with it for a bit.

Next I'll probably switch to Slackware or FreeBSD just to play around with, I keep all my files on a seperate partition so I change OS's every year or so usually.

If your looking for a production OS you should definitely go for one that your comfortable with. Cause it really sucks to admin a system that you don't know, not to mention your bound to screw something up accidentally.

For Desktops usually you just find one you like, or if you like learning you can just switch OS's every year or so, giviing yourself just enough time to learn a system fairly well and then trying another.

I won't tell you which one is the best distro, I think they're all pretty good, and its just a matter of you finding the one that suits your needs/desires.

Good luck with that.

I'm a Fedora Fan
I started with Red Hat 7, and I've like Fedora since.
It's has a really fast release cycle too (about ever 6 months)

Most of the newer linux distros are resource hogs, and you'll have a hard time running any of them on your Pentium II. (You wouldn't be able to run a Windows NT based system on it either)

You might have to find an older distro...

BTW, if you just want to TRY linux, you can always use Knoppix. I boots up from a CD, so you don't actually have to install it. (You can though...)

you could also use ubuntu for this purpose.

I think quite a few distros are producing "Live" versions too... I've used Knoppix a couple of times in the past, and have a couple of semi-recent Ubuntu Live CDs laying around here somewhere, but don't need to use it much any more since sticking Fedora on the laptop.