I guarantee you us Linux zealots won't complain about which distro.
Dell will have to pick just one - we understand that. Probably Ubuntu (if 7.04 turns out well come April) or Suse/OpenSuse by Novell. But it won't really matter. The hardware compatibility (or lack thereof) issues are pretty universal across all distros, with minor exceptions. The WiFi cards, printers, video cards and the like that work well in one distro almost always work well in all others, the real oddballs excepted.
What this means to somebody like me (who would likely re-format to my flavor of choice regardless) is that it would be a signal to the application and driver writers to get their bleep in gear because Linux IS coming.
And guys, no joke here, it's coming.
I've been trying to find "the perfect distro" for months now - and by perfect I mean one state-of-the-art enough to keep my interest yet won't break or glitch on a newbie.
In that time I've come across two "lemons" - one barely so (Ubuntu 6.10 "Edgy Eft", really no worse than WinXP) and one catastrophically Godawful (Sabayon, but that's not fair because it needs very modern video hardware, it's the official testbed for Beryl).
Ubuntu 6.06 ("Dapper Drake") was OK but a tad outdated.
OpenSuse 10.2 was rock-solid, but the package management was ugly and repositories (places where you go to add goodies) were mostly overseas and had some downtime. Workable for somebody not into tweaking stuff a lot.
Fedora Core 6 was very, very good. I would have loved to stick with it but...every once in a while an auto-update would do something silly and break something minor...like auto-mounting abilities for USB drives. Not enough to hose the system, and a few minutes searching the excellent forums would sort it out, but a newbie couldn't cope. I want to get to the point where I can support real newbies with a system that I also use daily.
Mandriva Free 2007 was OK, but not as cutting edge as FC6 and about as glitchy. Sigh. Next...
I've had Zenwalk 4.4.1 up for the last two days now and am very, VERY impressed. Package management isn't quite as broad as the Red Hat/Debian families but it's not bad and it's by FAR the friendliest system for adding/removing apps I've ever seen, period. Windows XP included. Also THE fewest glitches of any sort on install and operation - zero so far, including perfect auto-detection of my extra-funky video (ATI Radeon 7500 mobile). Too early to tell for sure but dayum, this may be IT - "the chosen one". Real out-of-left-field contender, too, a friggin' -=Slackware=- fork of all things.
I intend to do a full review at a week out.
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Never mind the distro. I'll tell you right now where this stuff is ALL headed: right down Microsoft's throat.
It is easier to maintain and operate a Linux desktop/hard-user box than WinXP and almost certainly Vista as well. Linux is faster, more stable, undisturbed by malware, and all the better distros come with serious software firewalls. Software support is speeding up FAST now that parallel development efforts between Linux and it's Mac 10.x cousin are becoming normal.
Most of the distros I've tried have been far and away better products than Windows. Period, end of discussion.
Is it perfect? Of course not. A few things still glitch. I have a PCMCIA cellular modem on the Verizon net that's a pain to get working in Linux, so I paid $200 for an external router with it's own PCMCIA slot that turns the cellphone signal into plain Ethernet and WiFi (Kyocera KR1). Works great, let's me share the connection.
Let me repeat: I paid $200 to get out of Microsoft's clutches, and if I had to I'd pay triple that today to keep doing it if I had to.
I don't give a damn about any "Linux discount" because I've already got mine: in less aggravation, in knowing I'll never have to struggle with a botnet virus that slipped past a fully paid-up Zonealarm Pro subscription like it wasn't there, as happened to me seven months ago when I first downloaded Ubuntu.
Nobody owns my rig but me. Not Bill Gates, not Symantec, not McAfee, not some creep half-geek botmaster nephew of a Russian mob boss, not any scumbag digital bully spewing crapware for profit. Not now, not ever and there ain't a one of ya on Windows who can say the same with a straight face unless you're behind a professionally maintained hardware firewall.