Selection criteria

[Phillip Mills]

I hope this doesn't generate any kind of "my distribution can beat up 
your distribution" argument, but I'm interested in knowing what 
selection criteria people used when deciding to put Linux on a system.  
In part I wonder whether there's any agreement that requirement X leads 
to solution Y, and in part I'd like to examine whether a new Linux user 
should be steered one way or another depending on what they need to get 
out of it.

(If you've had reasons to put different distributions on different 
systems, that's really interesting!)

For example, a couple of years ago when I decided to add a Linux system 
to my home collection it went this way:
1) Since the only net access the system would have would be for me to 
dial out with one of my Macs and then use that as a gateway, I was 
willing to pay for a comprehensive set of CDs.
2) Among the ones that were on the shelves in stores I knew, I selected 
the one with the most up-to-date kernel and developer tools.
On that day, the winner was SuSE 8.1 Pro.

(OTOH, about 8 years ago, my approach where I worked was to download 
whatever minimal system I could find, because the only requirement was 
to match the zero dollars in the software budget.)

I suspect others have used more analysis and broader requirements.  (?)

........................
Phillip Mills
Multi-platform software development
(416) 224-0714

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