Distro-hopping update (Part 2)

Of everything I have tried so far, my top 3 favorites at this point in time are:

1. Ubuntu
2. Sabayon
3. sidux
4. Linux Mint
   

1. I like Ubuntu a lot, and I have been using it for quite a while. The LTS is stable, and does not give me any problems--or they are few and far enough between that I can't really remember the last issue I had. I use this on my desktop. Pros: stable. just works. Cons: can be a pain to configure with codecs/dvd burn type stuff. Also not always with the latest software.

2. Sabayon is pretty awesome. based on Gentoo, it is definitely powerful, and runs well even on this junky-ish laptop. Entropy is well laid out and handles updates and package dependencies. Also, emerge/portage is available for packages not contained in the Sabayon repositories. Pros: fast. flexible. stable, for the most part. everything works as it should. Cons: have had a couple of bugs, but definitely nothing major.

3. sidux. another one that is very cool. sidux is based on Debian, so it can use Synaptic GUI with the very powerful apt-get command. the debian repositories are filled with tons of stuff, and .deb packages are very common. this is a rolling release distro, so there are no real upgrades in the normal sense. just run a command and everything is updated to the latest version. neat. Pros: bleeding edge software (and lots of it!). rolling release model means no big upgrades. fast. Cons: things can break when running the latest--the downside of being based off of unstable branch/sid.

4. Linux Mint. This is like a better version of Ubuntu. comes with codecs, video drivers and things preconfigured. all of the Ubuntu repositories are available. Pros: stable, lots of software available. Cons: can't really think of any, unless the style just doesn't suit you.