There are some great distributions in our wonderfully cluttered Linux distro landscape. Some are very similar to others, and some are wildly different from the rest. The one thing to remember is that while these distributions may be amazingly well thought out, and amazingly well put together their obscurity will present two problems. First, smaller communities will not be as capable of helping you with every problem you face. Second, with fewer users you also have fewer contributors. This means that releases may be infrequent and irregular, and package repositories will be sparse. If these problems are not crucial deal breakers for you, read on.