What & Where

What is the latest version of the Linux system and where can I get it ?

Kinda becoming less & less happy with Windows.

as far as i am aware this is it...

Linux 2004

Uh, which one?
There's just about a billion Linux distributions available; not to mention the various and sundry Unix distros.

2.6.10 is the latest stable (2.6) kernel
2.4.29 is the latest (2.4) kernel (don't think that's stable though)

slackware 10.1 was out a few days ago, I used slackware for sometime, it's a very good distro (It's also the original linux)

you can find http/ftp mirrors at linuxiso.org, if you want to get it via bittorrent, go to tlm-project.org

Actually a lot of Distributions have released mile-stones markers with NetBSD 2.0 being released and FreeBSD 5.* (don't remember it)

If your planning on just using Linux for everyday working, just find a distribution of your choice. If you choose a Linux distro it'll probably come with the 2.6 Kernel, but probably has the option of 2.4.

The freshest stable freebsd is 5.3 -- I just put it on my laptop a couple days ago. Then I thought I'd try netbsd -- 2.0 is the freshest stable release. Tomorrow I'm gonna try openbsd 3.6 as a lan server. Man, I'm getting lots of installation practice this week.

The linux distros I liked best were slackware and debian, but there's lots of new ones now. I keep hearing about gentoo; it seems popular.

I don't think the newest is necessarily the best. You might have bad luck with a new major version -- I've seen some pretty sloppy distros that simply shipped too soon (mandrake comes to mind). What you want is a fairly smooth install, a well-designed and maintainable system (linux is after all just a kernel), and the opportunity to get your feet wet.

Odds are if you like unix you'll explore more distros and flavors, so I'd say just get anything that's reasonably friendly for now. You can always replace it later -- it's not such a big deal to install once you go through it a few times.

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I actually had a question that might fall into this thread. What distros of linux would you reccomend in the following aspects:

* x86 achitecture (Pentium II chip)
* low memory usage by the OS
* definately a GUI(prefferably gnome)
* easy installation of additional software, preferably some sort of package manager

I already know red hat, debian and mandrake I am looking for others as a comparison so i can chose the one I like best. Also what is your impression on Lindows?

any help would be nice

thanks

I thought lindows was designed more for corporate use, but I haven't visited their site since they first started up.

You could use any distro that gives you a "minimal install" option, which should be all of them. Then just add what you need; this will conserve a lot of disk space. If you want to conserve memory, don't use gnome or kde -- these are "desktops" and run with a lot of overhead. For best performance use something lean and clean like blackbox, fluxbox, etc., and don't bother with the fancy graphical loaders -- just use startx with .xinitrc to speed things up.

I hope that by now all distros have a package management system, but this wasn't always the case. My knowledge of the distros is too outdated to help you here, but you're wise in considering the importance of this.

That being said, if you've tried debian maybe you'd also like to try slackware. That was the first distro I tried 10 years ago, and I hear it's still going strong.

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