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> I believe today Debian is the premier choice for any true Linux aficionado that has the experience to deal with it. I'm sure many would disagree with me, but they're all wrong :)
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> Paul
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I believe a similar case could be made for *many* distributions.
Slackware, for example.
Or how about LFS--"Linux from scratch"--in which you actually create your own distribution?
I could go on, but you get the idea.
If you are such an aficionado, then you might contemplate doing what I have not bothered with for five or six years now--and compile your own kernel, removing all the cruft that is there for exotic machines and optimizing it for your own processor in the process. In some cases, that can greatly speed things up while reducing the memory footprint considerably. It's also a great learning experience.
Personally, I am not such a purist. Debian has always been popular with certain groups of people, including those who follow (and care about) the positions of Richard Stallman--whom I find something of a nut, although a frequently entertaining and occasionally quite useful one today. (Obviously, we all owe him a huge debt for having created Gnu and the many tools we use today often without much thought. However, I don't go so far as to refer to "Gnu Linux" nor have I quite departed my senses enough to embrace EMACS in all its arcane glory!)
I use Linux for several reasons--it works, it gives me incredible flexibility, and I am always able to learn new things to keep the gray cells exercised. It also keeps me from the anger I feel when I am forced into a model of computing in which choices are made for me--as with either Windows or the Mac.
That said, I think in a very few years we will hardly recognize the operating system landscape. The OS is, essentially, slowly dying other than as a platform for online resources. Soon enough, computers seem to be marching toward a future in which they are little more than extremely smart terminals.
If the Google Chrome OS is successful, that will be a rather large step in that direction--even though it is based on Linux.
David
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