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"gNewSense"?Sounds like Stallman is still desperate for 'GNU/Linux' instead of just 'Linux'

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I think it might have to do with how FSF people are even more of fanatics than Debian people, so there must be a difference we aren't seeing with this hack job.. I mean distro.

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Funny I've seen that happen as well.. and I've seen many other variants with every rendition of winbloze as well.I work in the industry for a living and the reality is all installers will eventually have a problem.. could be a bug.,. could be poor quality hardware.. could even be a simple conflict of ram with the motherboard.. or any one of countless other possibles.Your attitude with such however is the problem.

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Is it a coincidence that the name is pronounced "nuisance"?

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The number of distributions of Linux is a problem. I am an intelligent person (though I say it myself), a mathematician/physicist, I program, I can fix computers (and blow them up), I have used Linux in the past and am considering using it in the future but deciding what distribution to use seems to take a lot of research and in the end is still going to involve a fair amount of guesswork/luck/tossing a coin. How are my friends and contemporaries (the not so geeky ones) supposed to make the choice, never mind my parents. I think that distribution ecosystem is a great way of pushing Linux forward as well as just a way to offer people choices but there must be a better way of doing things. Imagine a Linux meta-community where somehow many separate projects work but keep in close contact with each other, aware where they are duplicating work, finding the places where it is fruitful to have differences and those where it is better to have standardization. Where somehow it was all much clearer exactly what the point of each distribution is. I seem to be getting beyond distributions here and talking about core Linux applications.Does anyone think that there is a way to bring the distributions together with some sort of... thing? A big forum. The trouble is you can't just bung up a Wiki: Even if every distribution did decide to start posting to it, it would just be a mess, or maybe not. This would require a herculean effort of organization, or maybe not. Perhaps it could start quietly just as a Wiki just mapping out the different distros and over time it might become a forum for debate and all that other stuff I said.

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Bit of advice: don't use anything that says 'no nonfree software' on its features page. That is a sure sign of zealots who don't care if the distro they release will kill your system, so long as their precious political goals aren't compromised in any way.

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Personally (though i am naturally biased) I think you should go with Debian. You aren't a newbie, and you seem to place more emphasis on compatability and stability than the "just work" philosophy, in which case I would say Ubuntu. You also aren't a large corporation that needs accountability and long-term support (and has the money for it), in which case I would have suggested RedHat or SuSe. You also seem to be sane, so no Gentoo for you. If you needed a live distro, Knoppix is the way to go. Those are the big ones (although somebody will complain that I left out Slackware, or Mandriva, or YellowDog, etc.) and I would stick with one of them if you don't want to worry about your support/developer community dropping out from under you when the project dies.Debian also has a pretty large following in the academic/scientific community, so you'll find lots of well-supported packages that would interest you. Debian is the guru on the hill of the distros; old, not very up on the times, a little cranky, and not too flashy; but is very very wise, deeply philosophical, solid like a rock, and will outlive us all.As far as a more "global" effort:There is a project called the Linux Standards Base ( <a class="user" href="http://linuxbase.org&quot;&gt;http://linuxbase.org&lt;/a&gt; )that is aiming towards what you're talking about. But since "GNU/Linux" (if you can consider it a single entity) is free and open-source; it will by it's very nature have a problem with non-compliance. Once you open it up, it's essentially subject to the laws of natural selection; and you can't globally standardize evolution. But, then again, that is where it's major strength lies; in the ability to break out of any constraints and fill any niche that it can.

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@WyzardThis is the Free Software Foundation we're talking about here. Their charter states: "The Free Software Foundation (FSF), established in 1985, is dedicated to promoting computer users' rights to use, study, copy, modify, and redistribute computer programs." gNewSense is preaching to the converted. That said, I like the idea of having a distribution to use as a reference for binary-blob control in other distributions. I like the fact this exists. All this does is point out where we're at. It doesn't actually change anything at all.The only way to influence hardware manufacturers to open up their specs so that kernel developers can write drivers for that hardware, is to make a distribution that becomes really really popular and tell those hardware manufacturers that you don't want binary third-party drivers, that you want open specs. You have to call the shots. Alternatively, follow Andrew Morton's lead "we'll write drivers for your hardware for free under an NDA". This is really smart. Popular distributions like Ubuntu will (ironically) do far more for the discouragement of binary firmware blobs and proprietary drivers than any flag-waving derivative with a tongue-in-cheek name and esoteric website.

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Thanks to all who corrected me, I am not really up on "free" software in that sense so it had never crossed my mind. Nice to know that some diggers actually are decent and will explain something rather than leaving a rude comment and digging me down for being ignorant.

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