Which GNU/Linux distribution?

With hundreds of different GNU/Linux distributions (from now on referred to simply as a "distribution") and more than ten of these being major (popular) distributions, it can be hard to know which one to use.

There are two main types of distributions; 1) easy to use/beginner friendly and 2) complex/appealing to experts. Examples of #1 are Ubuntu, Fedora, Linux Mint, Mandriva, OpenSUSE and examples of #2 are Slackware, Gentoo and Arch Linux. Distributions that fall in the middle (or could be argued for either side) are Debian and CentOS. To begin with, I wouldn't recommend beginners straying away from these distributions; these all have a large community base so support will be easy to come by. Try these distributions to see which one you feel most comfortable with or what works for you.

If you're like me and don't want to have to spend a long time at the command-line to get everything working every time you do a re-install, try the #1 distributions.

Recommendations

This list contains the distributions that I have come back to more than once; I have a nice and bad word to say about each one. These are personal opinions/experiences.

Ubuntu

Pros

• Provides a revised/cleaner GNOME desktop
• 99% of the time, things just work with little to no configuration (printers for example)
• Huge software repository

Cons

• Doesn't provide a way to encrypt your whole system (only /home) so your locate database (and anything outside /home) is exposed; it's also encrypted in a non-standard way (standard being /dev/mapper/)
• The new Unity interface for netbooks feels slow and squashed; I'm forced to scroll left/right on most websites!
• Corporate-like; training courses, paid support/software (Landscape for example and if you want more out of Ubuntu One)

Fedora

Pros

• Has a strong policy against non-free/proprietary software
• Aims to implement upstream changes rather than fix things themselves
• Some things work better; 3D cube is very easy to set up, the Disk Utility shows more/accurate "health-related" information than other distributions

Cons

• Small software repository compared to other distributions; forced to use third party repositories for many desktop applications

Debian

Pros

• Available in Stable, Testing and Unstable/experimental form
• One of the oldest surviving distributions
• Available for many architectures

Cons

• Things in Testing can be unresolved/broken for some time
• Stable is outdated, even at the time of its release

Arch Linux

Pros

• Very simple and appealing to customise/build from the ground up

Cons

• There can be too many options; sometimes it's nice for someone else to make all the small decisions for you

Further study

DistroWatch Information and news
Wikipedia List of Linux distributions and further information