Distro Opinions

[eon]

I've been noticing at http://distrowatch.com/ the rapid upward movement of one debian based distro
( the one whose name sounds like something you do when you go to the toilet ).
I realized that I'm as opinionated as the people at boards who brag about "their" distro, and
I suspect I could get some heat about this post but my clothing labels inform me that they're
flame resistant.
People have tribal leanings and even though we're in this open source experiment we tend to
look for even smaller groups to identify with, and then attack or compete with ones we don't identify with.
It does irk me that it has to be so competive. I know there are benefits to that too-still it bothers me.
I don't like the distro that's on that rapid rise at distrowatch. In my opinion it isn't as flexible or as much
fun as knoppix. The rapid riser, seems, in my opinion, to be positioning itself to become a big commercial linux,
and they rave about their chosen favorite alot too. ( I used to frequent their user board )
I have used about a dozen different linux's. Amoung them suse, mandrake, debian woody, slackware, bsd,
xandros, gnoppix, jamd, dyne:bolic, the afore-mentioned quick riser and of course knoppix.
I'm using slack right now. I couldn't get xine to work in knoppix but it works great in slack. Sometimes
the less "jazzy" distro's have great features. I've found slack to be really the best for figuring out a problem
and then sometimes I can apply the solution to one of the other distros. (I multi boot 7 installed linux's).
There are, I think, always positives and negatives with any experiance which includes software.
The two distros I use and like the most are knoppix and slackware.

[UnderScore]

On the topic of society being competitve & trashing others:
One of the universal truths is that stupidity & bigotry is not bound by any age, language, locale, sex, race, religion, creed, political ideology, size, shape, color, weight, etc. This truth also applies to such topics as import vs domestic cars, sports teams, OSs, immigration, CPU chips, video game platforms, programming languages, etc. A corallary to this truth is that most people can not acurately compare & contrast their topic/product without insulting & trashing a competitor topic/product. These two concepts are most often found in individuals who have low self-esteem & feel the need to just belong to something or anything. These people use the anonymity & the power of the Internet to spread their message of hate and intolerance in order to justify their new found "self worth".

On that fast rising distro:
If the distro in question is mepis, then my personal experience is only with the live CD that was released within the last 30 days. I did notice some things. The mepis is made up of Free & Open Source software, but the distro as a whole is not under a Free or Open Source license. See http://os.newsforge.com/comments.pl?cid=102205&sid=42176. It looks like mepis is distributing RelaPlayer which is not free for all distribution. If it was, then Knoppix would have RealPlayer too. The mepis license is for non-commercial use only and may be ditributed for non-commercial use. This is because one of the administrative GUI packages is under a restrictive license similar to how Suse's YAST was under a restrictive license (now a GPL license). The author of the mepis admin GUI is free to license it as he sees fit. I am free to complain about it because I am not permitted to use mepis at my job nor can I make copies and give it away like I give away Knoppix. The other mepis issue (which I have not verified or have absolute proof) is with their wireless support. Many people have noticed that mepis has better wireless device support as compared to other distros. I have found forum postings where some people suspect that they may be distributing binary wireless drivers outside of the driver's license agreements.

On using many distros:
I love using many distros & have become distro independent. I have used probably 30 plus distros and now use about 10 to do my job, hobbies, and volunteer work. Off the top of my head I use:
RedHat ES/AS 2.1 & 3.0
Fedora Core 2 & 3
Suse SLES 8 x86/x86-64, 9 x86/x86-64
Suse 9.x Pro
Knoppix
Debian
Gentoo
IPCop
CensorNet

[eon]

Thank you UnderScore you filled in a lot of blanks for me on that disto that would be king ( at distrowatch anyway ).
I also appreciate the sharing of information and experiance. Maybe that's the prize to community. We all
have different experiance and learning, and in sharing it we get to discover something beyond our seperate selves.

I had wanted to create a poll when I posted this topic but wasn't able to (maybe the question was too long for the form?).

I'm curious as to what makes an OS one you return to. For me I know I like options i.e. the ability to
try different things. I don't, myself, have a complete answer to this question.
Some OS's/distros have alot of appeal while I wouldn't use others if you paid me.