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[quote]Linux's open-source philosophy / Basic applications What's the fastest distribution? / Which one is the most stable? my computer to last a long time / Minimum upgrades [/quote] [b]OpenSUSE 11 (19-June-2008)[/b] [quote]helpful community popular/common hardware[/quote] Find Answer on : [url]http://opensuse-community.org/[/url] [quote]most compatible with different hardware[/quote] Check HCL in [url]http://www.OpenSUSE.org[/url] [quote]playing games[/quote] It's more depend on emulator that distro. It's better to install a stable distro, then seeking for appropriated Utilities/Apps Wine now is stable and Version 1.0 is released [quote]Cedega[/quote] [i]Cedega, a subscriber-based version of Wine with lots of additions and a focus on gaming[/i] Refer to --> for a detailed ... : [url]http://www.linux.com/whatislinux/123853[/url] [quote]I don't mind having to learn everything about the way it works[/quote] Check : [url]http://en.opensuse.org/Testing:Features_11.0[/url] mehrshad moslehi ---- vigol ---- vigolyas www.vigol.com - mehrshadmoslehi@yahoo.com [Modified by: mehrshad moslehi on June 22, 2008 03:28 AM]

       mehrshad moslehi       vigol       vigolyas
www.vigol.com      mehrshadmoslehi@yahoo.com

For speed, many would say Gentoo or Slackware. I certainly found that Vector (based on Slackware) was noticeably faster than Xubuntu (based on Ubuntu) based on OTB settings on a resource-limited system (old laptop). Of course, sytems like DSL and Puppy are even faster, but wouldn't suit your gaming purposes well. The biggest communities are likely Ubuntu, Fedora, OpenSUSE, PClinuxOS, Mandriva, ... but any major distro has a lot of support. I'm not sure about hardware support differences between the distros. You should definitely confirm the choices you listed. Here's a general link: http://www.linuxquestions.org/hcl/ Though recent hardware is generally well supported, the absolute latest versions may have Win drivers and no linux version set up yet (these come from hardware manufacturers and they target the largest audience first/only). Check your chosen distros forums or HCL too, as mentioned above if you choose OpenSUSE. For stability, Debian apparently has very robust testing and solid reliability. As far as upgrades, all the major distro offer more rapid development than MS, but you don't need to upgrade if you don't want to. Ubuntu has a 3-year long-term-support version that was just released, meaning they'll provide security patches for that period for the sytem / all software versioned at release. Whether the games change requirements during the next few years is uncertain.