One thing people don't talk too much about is support. What I am interesting is how long we will get security patches.

Windows for example often have pretty long term support partly because they don't have a new release for a long time. As a result, patches are often available for a long, long time.

Supposedly, Ubuntu LTS has about 3-5 years while non-LTS is about 18 months. Fedora and Mandra seems to only last a year. What's your opinion on Linxu lifecycles?

This is a comparison that does not make a lot of sense. The development and maintenance of Linux distros follows a totally different paradigm. The most important difference is that Linux organizations have no motivation to withhold improvements. Some distros (eg Arch) are continually upgraded. Others are simply upgraded when the maintainer feels like it.

Second, the support often comes from the community and not from the distro maintainer.

Third, some will argue that Linux is inherently more secure and does not need constant patching.

For the commercial ("enterprise") distros--eg RHEL (RedHat) or SLED (Novell), I'm guessing that the quality of support, regular updates, etc. is better than anything MS has ever done.

Well, I am not saying that Windows is better. Recent window release for example have cause a lot of problem. I am interested in maintenance patches. I am interested in getting a stable system and then getting patches to maintain security.

One can continue to keep installing new releases, but that is not necessary a good idea to keep upgrading. On my ancient desktop, an older release may actually better than a newer release. Support for older hardware sometimes gets removed. Support for my desktop's 3dfx Voodoo gets less and less on each release.

The same is true for new machines. Ubuntu 7.10 worked relatively OK on my Averatec 2370. I was hoping that Ubuntu 8.04 will correct some of the problems in 7.10, but it turned out to work even worse.

If you're looking for long-term updates, both Slackware and Debian would be good choices.

Security updates for Debian 3.1, released in June of '05, ended only in February of this year. If I'm not mistaken, Slackware 10.2, also released in '05, is still receiving updates.

I actually have Ubuntu 7.04 still running on my desktop. It is still being updated. I did put 7.10 on my laptop and it seemed fine but my laptop does not get the same use my desktop does. I did a Wubi install of 8.04 FTHOI and it seems okay. My desktop is not still running 7.10 because it has low specs but just because I do not like to change my main distribution so often.

My previous PC had a 500Mhz Celeron and 256RAM (maxed out). Although the then current Debian version worked fine, the then current Suse version would only play video well if I was in Blackbox rather than KDE.
I had decided I would need to choose a different desktop and watch my software choices or upgrade my computer. It turned out I was able to upgrade.

If an older PC is what you have to use now you need to use your Linux savvy and realistically evaluate what you use your computer for and what works well on it to make some decisions on what distribution and software to use.

And if you want the long term updates, but free, you could go with CENTOS, which is RHEL re-badged and I believe they do 5yrs updates as default.

It occurs to me that some Linux distros give up reliability in order to try and feed the bad habits of the typical Windows user. In the early years of personal computing, I had the impression that DOS was pretty reliable. As a MAC user, I learned the fine art of bashing DOS for it's user-hostile nature, but the fact is that DOS forced users to pay attention to detail. Then MS decided to copy Apple and the rest is history.

The beauty of Linux is in the choices. If you choose the dumbed-down Ubuntu approach, then the fundamental laws of physics say that you may lose something.

For paulsiu; It may be time for you to try Debian stable, Arch, Slackware, or maybe even LFS.

I have always felt that a competent DOS user that understood how to write batch files could take control of their OS. Although Linux/UNIX is more powerful with shell scripts the comparison still seems apropriate.
But I disagree here. My feeling is that Ubuntu is "dumbed up". Between what is offered in the basic operating system and on support sites such as their forums there is sufficient information to go way beyond "dumbed down", or not as the user chooses.

I don't think Ubuntu is dumbed down. It is a bit more on the cutting edge side like distros like Fedora and Open Suse. Fedora seem to trade stablility for the latest and greatest so Redhat can let users try stuff out before moving the changes to RedHat enterprise.

The trouble with not using a cutting edge distro is that most of them don't work properly with laptops, unless they were one that are on the compatibility list.