Well, choosing a Linux distribution is actually a matter of personal faith. There are largely three kinds of people: the one who use one of the many distributions available as is, those who install an available distribution and customize it to their satisfaction and the geeks who go a step further and create and use their own distribution. For the sake of simplicity, let's not talk about the third category for now.

Like most people who do tech work of some sort or another for a living I love my toys. I’d love to have the latest and greatest gee whiz system and if I won the lottery I probably always would. Today’s best full-featured distros all have native 64-bit versions. One of my favorites, Vector Linux was a little late to the table but I’m pleased to report that the current release, Vector Linux 5.9 Standard, has a 64-bit version in beta right now. Good news.

Distros have changed. In the past, they were made up of a small, tightly knit group collaborators working toward a common goal. With distributions today we now have an informal, large group of collaborators...some of which may not even be aware of the main goal of the distro.

Start your search by checking out the distribution Web sites. Read the the FAQ and Wikis pages to learn how the different distros work. Check out the features and read what sorts of requests for help have been made on the community forums, and how those requests were answered. This approach will help you to narrow down exactly what you are looking for in terms of support and ease of use.

I'm not doomsaying here by any means. Just opening a channel for discussion based upon some observations of mine about the current state of Linux in general. So please don't panic while reading this. I want to try and inform through this article in hopes of generating discussion rather than causing a panic. So please be aware of that.

CIO.com asked the lead guys for each distro about its suitability for business use. In "The Fedora OS: Free, Stable and Customizable," Max Spevack, Fedora Project leader explains why this one is a stable, robust operating system fit for use on millions of computers worldwide.

Many people still question whether Linux will ever make it fully into mainstream computer acceptance. A $199 computer now available on a major superstore's shelves just in time for Christmas might change all that. Anyone who wants a computer to just to send email and instant messages and watch YouTube videos should like the Everex gPC, which is powered by a nifty Linux distribution called gOS.

When a desktop Linux distribution suddenly becomes popular before even DistroWatch starts tracking it, you know you've got something special. One new Ubuntu-based distribution, gOS, has managed to capture users' attention purely by word of mouth over the Internet.