I want to do mostly scientific work plus email on a GNU/Linux server. Apparently all the major distros have 64-bit versions available, which helps. Now I'm trying to decide which distro will be best for my uses. I know that this is the kind of thing that starts "holy wars" and I really am not trying to start any such thing! ;-) If someone can give me comparative information about the distros that have been recommended, that would help. If you just want to say what you like or prefer, you can do that, but that kind of information is probably not going to help me much. If you can specify *why* you prefer one to another (and you actually have experience with both!), that would be really valuable information. So what are the biggest differences between these distros for a server class machine? Would these differences affect users much or mostly just administrators? To clarify what I'll be doing: Mostly numerical analysis (in statistical genetics) using specialized packages but also using Octave, R, and other standard GPL code. I will have about a dozen users all running VNC (Enterprise Edition) desktops on the server. I want to run postfix and apache and some kind of webmail server. So, I won't be doing things like playing DVDs or music or games, so any distro differences on that kind of stuff is irrelevant. Thanks in advance for any ideas you can share. Mike -- Michael B. Miller, Ph.D. Assistant Professor Division of Epidemiology and Community Health and Institute of Human Genetics University of Minnesota http://taxa.epi.umn.edu/~mbmiller/