I am slowly going through the Gentoo install right now. I am trying a Stage 3 build first, since that seems to be the easiest.

The only thing I wish for was a bit more concept talk in the install doc. For instance, there's a command:

# mount -t proc proc /mnt/gentoo/proc

I have no idea what I'm doing here. But it works.

m

# mount -t proc proc /mnt/gentoo/proc

I'd read that as a command, or a commented line in a file, to mount (hook into the filesystem) the proc filesystem (a virtual filesystem that peeks into your kernel) as a proc fs type at the mountpoint /mnt/gentoo/proc. Is this one of these deals where you build the system from a ramdisk and chroot into /mnt/gentoo to get your final filesystem on hard disk? I about lost my marbles keeping my orientation doing that with CORE. Couldn't remember if I was on - or supposed to do something on - the hard drive, ramdrive, or mounted drive-to-be.

Or I could be completely off here.

Don't let anyone scare you away from the "harder" distros! I got started with Unix/Linux a little over a year ago with Slack 7.1. Now I'm a sys admin at an Internet Service Provider using mostly *nix boxes. IMHO, when you get your hands into the guts of the operating system, you truly learn what makes it tick.

Since then, I've loaded Caldera something or other (didn't like it--removed it), FreeBSD 4.4 (didn't like it--removed it, but now use it at work and on two seriously hacked Whistle Interjets), Slack 8.0 (very good), Slack 8.1 (very good), FreeBSD 4.7 (like it, now that I'm more comfortable with Unix) and several flavors of Solaris.

Slack isn't so hard that a noob can't figure it out; I did, after all, so you can, too. And doing things manually rather than with a pretty configuration tool teaches you what's going on behind the scenes. One other argument in favor of Slack or a similar distro is that my experience installing Caldera is that some of the other distros just seem a little more bloated. I've got my file server/2nd DNS server running on a 1GB drive (the home directories are on a larger drive; just the OS on the 1GB). I couldn't fit what I intended to be a similar install of Caldera on a drive half again as large.

At any rate, good luck and have fun, no matter which distro you choose. It's all a matter of personal preference anyway, so pick the one that does what *you* want it to do!

What? Slackware is aimed at everyone. It's just so good people use it like there is no X. It's that good. :P

I use it, and i only started 1 month ago.

I wouldn't say Slackware. I changed my system(200mhz P1) from WinME to Slackware, and well, without support forums and other computer to ACCESS the forums, I would be stuck trying to start XWindows or something. I'm still trying to figure out why I can access my network, but not access the internet.....

Gentoo is the distro I highly recommend for power users moving from WinXP. If you didn't know what you were doing in XP though, chances are Gentoo isn't the place for you, something more like Mandrake or Red Hat is.

I started with Red Hat, moved briefly to FreeBSD because I couldn't find what I wanted in Linux, then came back when I discovered Gentoo.

While Gentoo's install is command-line-based, the install documentation walks you through command-by-command, and the forums and IRC channel are incredibly helpful for anything else. Gentoo users are the most friendly and helpful I have seen yet, IMHO.

Gentoo also gives you a great understanding of how Linux works, and I've never seen a better package management system than portage, *especially* for dependencies. Compiling everything keeps the distro highly optimized for your computer as well.

The only real downside is that Gentoo is difficult to use without a high bandwidth connection due to its nature of downloading and compiling source code. Slow computers also present a small problem with the compilation time for larger packages.

So for the adventurous Windows user wanting to move to Linux, I have to say Gentoo is the place to go.

Eh? Debian wasn't even a survey choice? Were you scared off by its hard-to-install reputation? It's much easier to install now, and Debian's quality control and package-management are top-class.

I keep hearing that...
I think I mentioned that I forgot Debian on the poll earlier on in the thread...and since you can't edit the polls once you create them its stuck as is...sorry about that.

Anyway Debian didn't even make it in the rankings if you count it as "other".

Mandrake 9.1 Way ahead in First place.
Redhat 9 taking a comfortable Second Place.
Slackware sliding in at third. (No wonder so many of the hardcore users are so bitter.)
Suse 8.2 doesn't quite make the top 3, and settles in at number four.

So there we have it, the New Desktop "Simple" Distros didn't even come close. I guess one one extreme we want the power and control over it, and the on the other extreme we want simplicity without sacrificing any of the power or control.