Im going into Information Security Systems or IT so to say. Been going to school for awhile now for it. I was already pretty well versed in computers anyways but not with networking really. I just got a new latitude laptop aimed towards business productivity. It came with Vista SP1 buisness and XP Pro sp2 , I opted to go with Vista. Im going to dual boot or virtual box a Flavor of linux geared for IT applications. Ive heard knoppix , Whoppix , or fedora are the way to go.

Just want some opinions on what flavor to go with that geared towards IT.

Ive been using ubuntu since about 2yrs ago, and Use fedora on my USB thumb drive when needed. So im pretty familiar with linux as it is....

I would just pick a distro that you like, and install one that you need.

I use debian/ubuntu on my non osx laptop, but that's mostly because i really like apt.

If you don't hate rpms then you're probably good to go with fedora.

if you're a compile from source person, then maybe gentoo is the way to go for you.

The BSD's would also work if you like the ports system.

I would go with Fedora. Good laptop support. If you don't like it, you can always change easily like Seany said.

Fedora 9 is pretty nice and was my sole operating system for a long, long time. Fedora 8, and then after a month of Fedora 9 coming out, 9.

When I got into linux, I tried Mandrake (Mandriva) and I liked it but it was way too easy so I tried Slackware and used that for like 5-6 years now. I would use something that is a challenge rather then Fedora, Suse, Ubuntu and those are easier to use then Windows. In the Corporate world, if people use Linux, its either Redhat or Suse as that's mostly who the hardware vendors support.

So I would try Slackware, Gentoo or Debian and then you will learn alot if you stick with it!

Posted by cereal83 ... So I would try Slackware, Gentoo or Debian and then you will learn alot if you stick with it!

Ok.

I would recommend Fedora, or more specifically Red Hat Enterprise. If your plan is to get marketable skills, stick as closely as possible to business established solutions.

If a company just wants Linux to do stuff cheaply, they won't care what flavor you are most familiar with, but if a business has a large investment in Linux, then Red Hat is the most likely product, and they will want someone familiar with Red Hat specifically.

Also, the majority of businesses are still using Linux on the server side as opposed to desktop. Focus your experience on keeping a server hardened and running with the absolute minimum exposure and wasted resources.