My distro: Arch Linux.

I went through the usual agonies. I hated Windows. I wanted to do Linux full time. I started with SuSE, and it was ok. It really didn't occur to me that there were literally hundreds of distros out there. Someone who was smart recommended Arch Linux. I enjoyed the installation procedure because it was so command line. Arch Linux is a good distro for Unix admins. The first thing I noticed was that it was lightning fast. It's optimized for 686. I had some old computers, and now I was able to make good use of them.

The inevitable doubt creeps in. What about all the others out there? What about BSD? So I tried Ubuntu. The people in the Ubuntu forums are extremely friendly. Arch Linux, not so much. But I didn't like the way they did sound, didn't like the BROWN, and thought the whole sudo thing was bozo.

I tried FreeBSD. It was OK. It is a much more secure OS. Arch really doesn't care that much about security. But there is so much more software written for Linux. And there is a huge user community, so I am able to Googlefix most of my problems.

So I ended back at Arch Linux. On the positive side, it does have a great package manager called pacman. Kind of a goofy name. Also, they have taken their logo from Star Trek. But they don't seem to have much of a sense of humor about that. They are definitely cutting edge in terms of their packages. You have to keep up with all the new developments or rebuild the server from scratch.

I find myself rebuilding from scratch every 4 months or so. Sometimes to fix the package bloat that inevitably happens. Sometimes because I didn't read all the instructions when I updated my packages. The philosophy behind Arch is KISS (Keep it Simple, Stupid). You don't have startup bloat, because you choose what services to start. It gets that from BSD.

It's a nice feeling to be in control of the box. My first computer was an Apple II, and I liked the command line control of the box. Unfortunately I have to use my wife's Windows XP box from time to time, because the scanner is not SANE compliant. Live and Learn.