Vine Linux is an APT-ified, RPM-based, multi-purpose distribution. Because of its Japanese heritage, very few English speaking users have taken a serious look at this distribution. This article provides the very first English language review of the latest stable edition.

Fedora (previously called Fedora Core) is an RPM-based, general purpose Linux distribution, developed by the community-supported Fedora Project and sponsored by Red Hat. Fedora's mission statement is: "Fedora is about the rapid progress of Free and Open Source software."

Sabayon is a multi-purpose, Gentoo-based Linux distribution. It is part-source, part-binary distribution. I just call it a hybrid distribution. The latest update, Sabayon 5.3, was made available to the public in early June.

Fusion Linux is a (desktop) Linux distribution derived from Fedora, with some inspiration from Linux Mint and Crunchbang, a Linux distribution based on Debian. It is developed by Valent Turkovic, a Fiber optics and Networking Engineer from Croatia. This release, Fusion Linux 14, aka Thorium, is the project’s second stable release.

Sabayon 5.4, released at the end of last month (September, 2010), is the latest version of the Gentoo-based, multi-purpose Linux distribution. This is the third release this year. The other two releases, Sabayon 5.2 and 5.3 were released in March and June respectively.

Fedora 14, aka Laughlin, is the latest update of Fedora, the Red Hat-sponsored, Linux distribution. Like Ubuntu, it is a GNOME-based distribution. However, there are spins for the K Desktop Environment (KDE), the Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment (LXDE), and Xfce. This review is based on the main edition, that is, the GNOME edition, using a DVD installation image.

Parsix is a Linux distribution based on Debian Testing. It is a community distribution with roots in Iran. It is not as popular as other community distributions, but development is active and well. The only previous review of Parsix on this website was of Parsix 3.2, which was more than a year ago.

Fedora 13 is the latest update to the Redhat-sponsored, RPM-based Linux distribution. It has long held a reputation of being a testbed for features that will eventually make it into Redhat Enterprise Linux, and, therefore, less stable than other desktop-oriented distributions. Inspite of that, it is a very good distribution.

Sabayon is a Gentoo Linux-based, multi-purpose distribution. Previous releases of Sabayon came in one huge DVD iso image with the option to install your favorite desktop. However, the latest release is available in iso images distinguished by desktop environments.