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Quote:Running Microsoft Windows or Apple's Mac OS X gives users about the same amount of flexibility as was offered to early car buyers. They could drive any kind of car they wanted, as long as it was a Model T and as long as it was black.

When the free open source Linux OS first showed up, early developers offered much the same set of options. Today, however, when picking a Linux distribution (known as a "distro"), users are offered a wide variety of flavors and features. In fact, Linux comes in so many different sizes and shapes that selecting the version most suited for consumer or enterprise use can be a seemingly impossible task.

"Linux is all about choice. Every distro is a little different. But under the hood all have the same core parts,"...

Quote:"Each Linux distro comes with its own powers and problems, and to say which one you should use would be tantamount to answering, 'What kind of car should I drive?'" said Scott Whitney of Journyx. Whitney has a strong view about not getting too fanatical over the differences in Linux distros. The particular flavor you select will matter less than the fact that you are not using the Mac or Windows platforms...

Each distro has its own set of strengths and weakness. For instance, Puppy Linux runs on very old hardware. It is compiled to run in available system RAM so it is very fast. However, limitations on expanding the amount of user storage is limited if this distro does not have adequate hard drive storage space.

"Eye-candy distros rely on more graphic displays, so the hardware demands are much greater. Other distros, such as Gentoo Linux, are more for hobbyists than serious workers. Users have to download the source code and compile it themselves before installing the OS," Kohn explained...