I seem to be able to go 3-4 years with a Linux distribution before I get bored of it and switch to something else. I've been running Gentoo for a couple of years now, but I'm getting that "time to change distributions" feeling again, so I thought I'd write up how it goes. What follows is the results of about 3 weeks of installing, testing, installing, testing, etc., recent Linux distributions to try and find a compelling replacement for my current Gentoo desktop.

Instead of trying all 3000 distributions, I decided to start with the (supposed) best-of-breed, unscientifically chosen by looking at the current Top 3 on Distrowatch. As of today, those are: Ubuntu 6.06 (I used Kubuntu ), openSUSE 10.1 , and Fedora Core 5 .

I'm going into this expecting a lot: It was OK to have to do a lot of manual configuration with Gentoo, since that was the whole idea. However, I expect these "Top 3" distributions to do all the work for me. I expect them to be as point-and-click easy as possible, and will note anything that strays from that expectation.

The story begins here: Moving from Gentoo to SUSE, Ubuntu, or Fedora Core?