[SepiasSoul]

I will be a new user to Linux or Unix depending. Which version would you suggest for someone who is vary capable Windows XP user. I plan on using this PC for mostly webhosting on the Internet as well as downloading. I'm changing from a Windows XP host computer because I'm tired of spending hours cleaning it up each week from the junk that resides on the net. From what I hear Linux and Unix both run cleaner on the net. The processor that I will be using is an AMD Athlon 3400 if that matters to the OS choice. If there is any hardware that I need to be careful with please let me know. I am rebuilding this unit when I upgrade it. Thanks for the help.

Sepias

[mixx941]

My personal recommendation is FreeBSD. While it may not have the "prettiest" install GUI like Fedora or SuSE, I prefer BSD over Linux. It is also great for serving, and powers many huge websites on the internet.

Pros:
- Has two easy to use methods for installing third party applications; ports and packages. A port contains instructions on how to download, checksum, patch, configure, compile, and install an application and all it's dependencies. With one command (`make install`), you can have an application and all it's dependencies installed and ready to use. Right now, there are over 13,000 ports. Packages are precompiled ports, and can save time on slower machines.

- It's extremely stable.
- It has excellent documentation
- It has an excellent community of supporters always willing to help, and who are always developing the OS (fixing bugs, adding ports, etc).
- It's great for desktop machines too. I run it exclusively on my workstations now.

Cons:
- An installer that is not as "pretty" as some of the Linux installs. The installer does however have excellent step-by-step documentation.

I know you said you are a beginner to *nix, but I think the approach of learning an OS like BSD first instead of a distro of Linux geared towards beginners is a better route. That's how I did it, so obviously this is my opinion.

If for some reason you HAVE to have Linux, I'd suggest Gentoo. It's a somewhat like BSD, but the install is much more complicated.

-Mark

[CouchMaster]

Go here and check them out. The first 5 on the hit list should be a good start.
http://distrowatch.com/

[ehumphri]

I would also reccomend nothing but FreeBSD. There are other *nix distrobutions out there, but FreeBSD has a one-size-fits-all approach in addition to the pluses listed above. Aside from my college laptop running xp, I use FreeBSD exclusively for desktops, laptops and servers at home and at work.

[SepiasSoul]

Thanks for the suggestions everyone. My biggest concern with the OS is finding applications that will run on both it and Windows. I will be using it to access files between the computers in my house most of which are laptops and a buying network server drives just seems to be too expensive to just act as a server and I dont want to spend money on an OS to just serv out files. Im trying to build a network on the cheap I guess is the shortest way to say all that.

Thanks,
Sepias

[mixx941]

Well it all depends on what you want to do really. If you want your machine to function as a file/web server and also be a reliable desktop machine, FreeBSD or another *nix OS will do great for you. If your most important requirement is to play all the newest games, then I would not suggest *nix unless you dual boot.

I also use FreeBSD for all my desktops here now and definitely all my servers. I absolutely love it because it just works so well, it's very stable, and it's free. I don't game, so that's not an issue for me at all. I think all the stress I have saved from not having frequent explorer.exe crashes/freezing, not having to reboot every 2-3 weeks , and just having overall better productivity outweighs any desires to play games.

As far as applications, FreeBSD in particular has a great central database of applications called Ports. Pretty much every application I can think of that runs on FreeBSD is in the Ports collection, and it's constantly getting updated. At this time, there is over13,500 ports (free applications you can install by using one magical command; "make install"). Some popular software that you may be used to in Windows runs natively on FreeBSD too. Some examples of course would be Firefox/Mozilla, Thunderbird, OpenOffice, Opera, GIMP, VLC, X-Chat, Azureus, etc. There are also many free and open source alternatives to commercial Windows software that can save you money anyway.

For your file sharing, you would most likely use Samba on the *nix server, and then you can access those shares over the network from within Windows.

-Mark

[brendandonhu]

Look at Mandriva or Ubuntu/Kubuntu for Linux or Gentoo which has a BSD ports-like system.
And there is also PC-BSD.

[tsunam]

There is also DragonflyBSD if you are set on a BSD, its supossed to be the sucessor to FreeBSD. From all that i've heard about it, its a great little BSD