What is your favorite Linux distro?
and possibly why?
Personally, I have Fedora 3 on my computer. I have used Ubuntu and Slackware, too. But I think I liked Ubuntu more, maybe because of its speed and easy installation of packages.
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I'm not sure if this topic will survive the no flamewars rule. But in case it does, my choice is Arch Linux. I like it because it is lightweight and fast. The base system is very small and you add to it just what you want. Archlinux with XFCE desktop on my old PII-350mhz with 256MB ram was faster than my Athlon XP1600+ with 3/4 gig of ram running Win XP.
It isn't designed for novices, but if you are willing to learn it will teach you a lot about linux. The system is installed and configured at the command line instead of using GUI tools and helpers. And the community/forums are pretty knowlegeable and helpful.
edit: Fix typo at end of 1st paragraph.
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I hope it does, thanks for doing this Milhan. There is a bewildering choice of distros out there and for relatively inexperienced users like me it's really helpful to know the merits and pitfalls of each. My thoughts were that people typically stick with what works best for them so seeing how many people use each type could narrow down the number of distros to try out.
Surely people on here are a little more mature than to flame other peoples choices aren't they?[
You see! Post one and I've a possible recommendation for the 8 X PII-450Mhz Dells I've sitting in my cupboard, and one I've never even heard of.
Thanks,
Mark.
PS. If this thread does get chopped I hope the mods don't blame Milhan, it was as a rsult of my request he did this.
I voted for Slackware because I like the simplyness.
redhat, for I am use it now..
I use Debian. Reason why? In the late 90's, I asked some savvy linux users which one I should get for my laptop, and they told me Debian, because it was the most difficult to install, and if I could install it, I'd impress the heck out of rest of the geeks who couldn't 
..hey, that's what they said...
..so that's the linux I use in my laptops...
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I used RedHat 9 from the beginning, and now using Fedora Core 5. Still don't want to change to another distro.
difficult to say. i am not really a linux guy, but have to use it from time to time. started with SuSE & RH on our servers, and on my desktop i used Debian and Gentoo, right now i am using Ubuntu cause everything works without much touching. to be honest, the nice things on linux are the GNU environments, so what i am really waiting for is a good, stable Nexenta OS version... 
regards PRESSY
No offence but FreeBSD is NOT a Linux distro. It's an OS altogether. There's FreeBSD just like there's GNU/Linux or there's Solaris...
This being said my favourite distro for a desktop would be Ubuntu.
For a server i'd go for Debian.
I prefer SuSe. Mainly because that's what we run here and that's what I know the best...
A valid point. I removed the option...no one had voted for it anyway. And while I was editing the poll, I went ahead and changed the names of Lindows and Mandrake to their current names.
I love certain distros for certain uses.
Knoppix is awsome for recovering data and such on my clients Windoze boxes
SuSE ran great on my old laptop (Omnibook with a PIII in it) where as Mandrake ran better on my old Dell (PII).
FreeBSD (while it's not a Linux) WOULD be my favorite if I could get it to run on ANY laptop!!!! 
I learned the basics of unix, like the command line and scripting on Linux, but haven't worked on Linux in the last couple of years, being a Sun and HP admin.
I got a new laptop on saturday (HP-nx6110) and decided to make it dual-boot with Linux and XP. Downloaded the iso for Ubuntu yesterday, and installed it today... the harddisk repartition was smooth and very fast. And the auto. portion of the install went through in just 20 minutes or so!
And it works just fine... gets my vote.
My fav distro really depends on what I am trying to acheive. My firewall box and any Linux server I set up simply HAS to be Slackware. I previously used BSD and switched to Slackware for compatibility with some software I needed to run. I love the amount of control Slackware gives in terms of configuration (while staying within the "rules" of the distro) and it is very close in setup to a UNIX.
On desktops however I love the APT method of package management. I started using Debian with potato, and switched to Ubuntu with the release of Hoary.
Ubuntu is my top pick for a desktop Linux distro.
For me anything that uses the debian packaging system is good. I was in the past a SUSE user because I prefer kde and SUSE is more kde geared, but was never a fan of rpm packaging system, Kubuntu severs me well in both respects as it also allows me easy access to gnome apps where they are needed, and so its parent Ubuntu get my vote.
I would also like to make mention of DSL for specific purposes where a small footprint is required.
I voted SUSE, because out of all the other distributions, it was geared for both ease of use and bad-to-da-core development. I love YaST and it's unique way of managing hardware and software for Linux.
Ubuntu for ease of installation and friendliness of people on the forums.
It is true what they say: It is the lazy person's Linux... but I sure do love working with it.
I've used Mandriva (nee Mandrake) in more modern times, though I started life on Slackware many moons ago. Since I had a variety of PowerPC based machines, Mandriva distros served me well. It always seemed a very clean install, lots of device support, reasonable default application configurations and a good suite of admin tools.
Having said all that, I have just installed a Linux partition on my desktop XP system (partly so I can use all the Linux toys on the Midi soundcards, amplifiers and other hardware plugged into that machine) and I chose Fedora core 5 since I happened to have a DVD around the place (from a magazine) with the latest distribution on there. It did install, though the boot manager didn't work first time. There are a number of things that aren't installed by default, and Fedora seem to have an issue bundling some software, but since it is *so* popular there are a million sites out there to yum from. Quite impressed so far ..
I dislike all those Linux looks like windows. Something simple, fast, reliable. Life is too short to reboot.
I have been using slackware ever since I've doing my CS in university.