| The Rules: The Best Home Distros must...
Work well on ten year old computers (933mhz PIII CPU with 512mb ram), plus work excellent on newer hardware.
The Linux distribution download ISO must fit on a 700mb single CD-r.
Include a gui package manager with large software repositories. A command line package manager is acceptable too (like pacman or apt-get) if it is easy to use and has good online documentation.
Have easy access to needed multimedia codecs, flash, and java if not already installed in the distro.
Configuration and settings tools must be in the menus, or in a centralized "control center".
The best Linux should include programs for everyday home computing such as a word processor, web browser, image editor, mulitmedia players, bittorrent, PDF viewer, text editor, DVD burner program, archive tool, and internet connection tools for DHCP, dialup, DSL, and Wifi. An email client, chat and instant messenger tools would be nice too.
The best home distros should be simple and user friendly. Once linux is properly setup on the computer, can Grandma use it?
And last of all, Linux for home PCs and notebooks should be fast! Modern computing is about speed, not just eye candy. Windows Vista broke this rule and Microsoft paid the price! This speed rule may exclude many good Linux distributions that use the Gnome and KDE desktops. However there are some fast distros that use the Gnome or KDE desktops that are worth checking out (like Slackware, and Arch).
Notice: There is no perfect operating system! Both Windows and Linux operating systems will require some post install configuration. Since there are thousands of different hardware configurations, you can't expect one operating system to work on all of them without some tweaking needed. You still might need to chase down needed firmware drivers and install some software to make it right for you.
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