OS decision help

http://www.linux.com/forums/topic/1676 -- That's a good first stop for distros. For the security aspect; Linux, as a whole, is pretty secure "out-of-the-box", normally with next to no user input. There are additional things you can do to make it more secure. There are projects like Bastille (here: http://bastille-linux.sourceforge.net/ ) which asks you questions, offers things to make the system more secure, explains what each one does and then does it for you if you want. There's also SELinux (Security Enhanced Linux - http://www.nsa.gov/selinux/ ) - an addition to Linux by the NSA to make things more secure. And Ubuntu also has the program "App Armor" ( https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AppArmor ) which does a similar job to Bastille. As a whole, you can use Linux without any additional work, and it's much more secure than Windows. If you want to lock it down, it doesn't matter which Distro you choose; they all have similar (and often the same) programs to lock it down. Pick whichever distro you like and then go from there (post here asking for help if you need some help securing it, we're happy to lend a hand). Penguin