[ILUG] Which Desktop Distro?

[David Golden]

On Saturday 29 September 2007, Conor Wynne wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I have decided that I'm going back to desktop linux after a long
> absense. I am not trying to start a distro war, although its been a
> while since we had one ;-0
>
> Here are my options as I see them :...
>

Mandriva exists.  Yes, it's a silly name, but it's the unholy union of 
and successor to the Mandrake and Connectiva linux distros so it kind 
of makes sense. http://www.mandriva.com/

Particularly friendly (or at least it used to be, been a while since I 
used it), and rpm-based. Now has quite a snazzy 3D desktop, apparently,
with some perhaps actually usability-enhancing features rather than mere 
eye candy: http://www.mandriva.com/en/projects/metisse

But  RHEL5 (or CentOS) is quite okay on the desktop, so long as you 
remember that rpmforge (and jpackage if you're into that) exist.

Personally, I just use Debian on my desktop and laptop.  It's quite 
nice, and doesn't have the overbearing theming you tend to get with the 
corporatey distros.