I'm with BaldYeti, when I openned this thread, I expected a flame-city, but, to my surprise, it was informative, and, well, civilized...

Now, my 2 shillings worth...

I have not tried anything other than Knoppix, and, for that matter, Knoppix did run flawlessly -=- with a few cheatcodes, and some selected purchasing of hardware, precisely, a WinModem issue.

Knoppix did something that no other OS has done, for me, that is. It introduced me to a world outside of Windows OS's. It brought me into, what I feel, is the future, Linux. Knoppix was, like I like to use, a kid in a candy store - with an all expenses paid account.

Knoppix was slick, somewhat easy to translate from a Windows World user, and it ran like a campion horse, for days on end, without requireing rebooting every day. Adding software was simple, and easy, and didn't require rebooting six times to get it running. Sheesh, I installed Win98, and I counted four (required) reboots to get it running, Knoppix hard drive installed in just one: boot to CD, install, and reboot into hard drive, thats it.

As for the "flavor" issue, all I can say is, what ever works for you. Considering we are all up against the "Mighty Microsoft" monopoly, Linux as a whole, it is amazing that any OS can handle some of the "microsoft specific" hardware issues, that exist. Linux, as a whole, does very well to tackle these problems. But, then again, when you have a OS that is supported by OpenSource, and a community of talented people behind it, hey, why shouldn't it succeed?

The "war" has started, Microsoft is turning its attention toward a "small" competition. I am sure that "someone" is behind the issues of "locking up" the OpenSource process, not naming names, but, IMHO, I think it has something to do with microsoft. I am quite sure that Microsoft knows how to "pull the plug" on Linux, and that would be to lock down the talent behind Linux, through the Openness of it.

Microsoft is natorious at taking out companies, not that this has been in the news lately, not much can go up against them, and win. Considering the magnitude of the "Company". Microsoft has gotten where it is today, through the use of "swallowing" companies whole, or throwing them into a lawsuit, until the compitition runs out of resources to continue to fight it.

Don't get me wrong, Microsoft is good, the products are good, the OS's, well, ok, they are getting to about average now, I'm being honest here. But, Microsoft has lost its "edge", that "new cutting edge look and feel", and it releases a lot of its OS's on its history. Win98 was just a little re-hash of Win95, WinNT was groundbreaking, but a lot of the newer OS's are just "mix and match" of this OS with that OS, stuff. Thats breaking down an OS to its smallest parts, and seeing what they have, mostly, in common with what they already have out.

Microsoft did one thing, in its early days, get a "main-stream" GUI on (almost) everyones desk, work location, etc...

Now, I may be seeing this all with "new" Linux eyes, the "new" OS. I never saw a "Linux" GUI in my life, I always thought Linux was closely related to its predicessor, UNIX - and thought it not only was GUI'less, but only had a command line, what I would liken to DOS. But, Knoppix floored me, made me seriously look to Linux as my new OS, and have since, made my system only Linux.

I think Linux is the next "evolutionary" step, in a long history of "where computers are going."

And before I leave, I'd like to say, that this computer evolutionary scale is somewhat like the evolution of man, and goes something like this:

DOS --> Windows running under DOS --> WIndows --> Linux --> who knows

Cuddles