Ok, I am past the whole NEWBIE thing. I need a stable, secure, custom distro...

[LittleGreenGecko]

What distro would you guys recommend. It does NOT matter how complicated this distro is, as long as I get to choose exactly what goes into the install (beyond the bare bones LINUX kernel and required libs). However it does matter how secure it is.

[Choozo]

Build yourself a LFS (http://www.linuxfromscratch.org) system?

[Frith]

Debian is good if you don't have a fast proc and you don't want to spend the entire day (or week) compiling every new program that you want to use.

Gentoo is good if you have a fast proc and you like your stuff optimized. And other stuff.

LFS is for masochists and Slack users who insist on doing everything the hard (and wrong) way.

[demian]

Debian if you want linux. Else check out openBSD

[scanez]

Originally posted by Frith:
<STRONG>Debian is good if you don't have a fast proc and you don't want to spend the entire day (or week) compiling every new program that you want to use.

Gentoo is good if you have a fast proc and you like your stuff optimized. And other stuff.</STRONG>
I completely disagree. I saw no speed/performance increase at all with my Athlon XP 1600 (which I assume would be considered fast ;)). So I have proven to myself that compiling stuff offers no real benefits (at least for me) and so I now I know that I will never stray from Debian...

But I suggest you just try them and decide for yourself which you like better ;)

[FLY FISHER]

I like Red Hat the best.
I used Debian, SuSE, and Mandrake.
The Red Hat was the easiest to install and use.
I would recomend this to any new person trying Linux for the first time. :)

[z0mbix]

Originally posted by LittleGreenGecko:
<STRONG>What distro would you guys recommend. It does NOT matter how complicated this distro is, as long as I get to choose exactly what goes into the install (beyond the bare bones LINUX kernel and required libs). However it does matter how secure it is.</STRONG>

This is one sure way to start a distro war! If you want to have complete control then yes LFS is a great choice, but Slackware will save you a little more time and effort.

[I Love NY]

Originally posted by FLY FISHER:
<STRONG>I like Red Hat the best.
I used Debian, SuSE, and Mandrake.
The Red Hat was the easiest to install and use.
I would recomend this to any new person trying Linux for the first time. :)</STRONG>

Can you look me in the eyes (or better yet, look at the title of the thread) and honestly say this wasn't off topic? ;)

[FLY FISHER]

I was just offering an opinion.
The best thing about most Linux boards was the idea of everyone helping each other and the offer of help and support.

[Timothy L. Miller]

Originally posted by I Love NY:
<STRONG>Can you look me in the eyes (or better yet, look at the title of the thread) and honestly say this wasn't off topic? ;)</STRONG>

Yes. He asked for opinions on what everyone thinks is the best distro, and that's exactly what FLY FISHER posted, what he thinks is the best distro. So it's 100% on topic...
And Red Hat is known to be fairly stable(as far as RPM-based distros go), and any linux box can be configured to be extremely secure, it's just the "customized" part that Red Hat doesn't fit the bill on. And even that can be done, just look at the number of customized Red Hat distrubutions there are.

[ 29 April 2002: Message edited by: Timothy L. Miller ]

[Choozo]

Well actually, 'I Love NY' does have a valid point since the topic clearly stated that the original poster was 'past the whole NEWBIE thing'.
When someone then recommends a particular distro to any newbie as a response to this, it's clearly off topic.

Cheers :)

[ph34r]

Read the distro choice howto. Oh, and I started with Redhat 5.2 then 6.0 then LFS then Slackware. I went to Slack 'cause I was tired of hunting down all the required header files, etc. I needed. When I had a LFS system, it was working to the point of playing Q3 at a LAN party with sound, 3d, etc. I went to Slack 'cause I was tired of hunting down all the required header files, etc. I needed to find every time I tried to add basic stuff.