Originally posted by: QuixoticOne
I'd probably say *buy* a copy of the commercial SUSE version on DVD;
it comes bundled with a few more integrated media
capabilities than the fully open source version does, and it is easy to work with and a good general distribution.
UBUNTU is OK but I prefer a DVD based distribution like SUSE or Fedora because the chances are most
of the programs you'd want are already on the DVD so you can just "install everything" and be almost all set.
With a single-CD based distribution like UBUNTU you get a good basic desktop after installing from CD, but
there usually are hundreds of optional add-on packages I end up wanting to install which involves a somewhat
lengthy process of selection, downloading, et. al.
UBUNTU's got less good support built in for firewall and various server related things than Fedora or SUSE.
Flash 10 and I believe Flash 9 are recently out for LINUX and I believe they work pretty well in general on
the modern 32 bit distributions. IIRC there are still some rough edges with 64 bit LINUX OS + 32 bit flash plugins
on some distributions, but I believe that has been worked-around fairly effectively through various means on
various distributions.
If you prefer to use nearly 100% UNIX as a main OS, you can always just run UNIX/LINUX and then
even run IE6 in Wine or a VM, or you could just run XP in a KVM / VirtualBox VM to run internet explorer 6/7 or
the Windows version of Firefox or maybe iTunes(?) / MS office / or whatever in the VM.
If you do major video gaming, though, you might as well just dual boot to Vista or XP since that's not going
to work well just under UNIX or even with a VM or WINE.
There are also projects like GNASH that replace a lot of what flash can do for LINUX, but if you're talking about
youtube type video etc. just run flash 9 / flash 10 plugins with firefox.
http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer10.html
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.p...ge=news_item&px=NjIzNA
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.p...ge=news_item&px=NjU2NQ