Every year or so, there's a new Linux distro darling. Last year's was Ubuntu, and I've lost track of what this year's favorite penguin might be. But a lot of newcomers to Linux seem to get the impression that a new distro is better than an older package because there'll be more attention paid to new technologies and easier user interfaces. In fact, pretty much the opposite is true.

So, what do you do if there's no distro which meets your specific needs? Or, what if you want a distro that doesn't bother you with any pesky prompting but just sets itself up exactly how you like it? In these cases - or even just for the fun of it - you can always make your own distro. And here's how.

I’ve used gentoo on and off for around 3 years now, since I got my last box, it’s been powering my main production machine at home. I’m a fan of it’s structures and concepts. Sure it’s not really a typical-user distro, but I’m not really a typical user. PClinuxOS is perfect for typical users (and I run it on my laptop where I develop software for them), Ubuntu and many other systems also target that market. If anything there is a major shortage in hacker oriented distro’s today.

Ubuntu is sometimes thought of as the beginner's distro, something that more advanced users don't care about - they think if you're advanced, you need Slackware or something where you have to build it from scratch, rewrite or add parts to the kernel to make it more compatible to your system, write your own drivers, etc, but that just takes up time.

Choosing an XFCE-based distro is not an easy task, because not all the users are the same...As you can rarely stick the "one size fits all" label to a Linux distro, I don't even try to recommend one XFCE-enabled distro or another. I will just write down a few notes on a selective list of distributions.

While we gracefully installed our favorite Linux distro, one of the mundane problems which most users face is - installing a new software. In the beginning, software installation on a Linux distro can seem extremely intimidating while using a terminal but more often than not we can install things graphically.

Which Distro is the one to go with If one has never dabbled in Linux. Keeping in mind that once I do get the hang of it I can always upgrade to something more advanced. but for now I want to learn which would mean something that is more straight forward and easy to grasp.

I might as well just stop blogging right now, because it might be over. I've found the perfect distro for me, and it was right under my nose the whole time. I'm writing this from Mandriva 2008, and so far, I don't see any reason to look beyond it (at least, for me to look beyond it) for a main distro.

"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.