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To recommend the use of Arch Linux as a server seems premature for now. I quote:

"Probably my main problem with the distribution is that some of the packages in the repositories are not built of the highest quality. Every once in a while a package will have a missing dependency, or not work as well as it should. This isn't a huge happening (and its never killed my system), but it is annoying."

Use a tested Linux Distro. I have never had Red Hat, Suse or Mandrake break anything with their provided packages.

I also find it laughable this search for a more hands-on distribution. Yeah, I really enjoy configuring my scanner by hand...

It is as if the distros that have better hardware detection had removed the wonderful terminal. They haven't and if you need to boost your ego by modprobing your soundcard, you can do so with any of the three named above.

Just turn off Kudzu or yast and modprobe to your heart’s content. It is funny to see all this silly implicit messages of "I like to use a distro that is not too simplistic", because the messengers of these missives are usually teenagers with little experience.

The people who are doing interesting work with Linux such as distributed computing, clustered CRM, and CMS systems that have automatic failover, actually want a system that does the tedious work for them so that they can focus on more interesting things.

Find out how cool Mandrake's urpmi paralell installation is or how advanced their clustering solution is. Give the Red Hat and Oracle combination a shot.

I applaud everyone who works on Linux and I like the abundance of distributions, but it seems to me that the open source movement would make greater technological progress if there was less duplication of effort and if we all became aware of the incredible tools that the main Linux distros already offer. These guys are ahead of the league because they simply build a better product.

Just my perspective on what appeart to be a recurring theme. Nothing personal. In the past few weeks, I interviewed about 30 people who claimed to be qualified for a new position as an administrator where I work. We gave them a set amount of time to accomplish a series of standard tasks that would be part of their job.

We gave them 30 different distributions to choose from as we did not want distro specific idiosyncrasies to color our evaluation of the candidates. Most of them chose to install Gentoo, Slackware and Red Hat as that was what they run at home. Had they been familiar with what Red Hat and Mandrake already offered, they would have passed with flying colors and would have completed the assignment in a timely manner.

Instead, most spent almost a whole day and were unable to actually complete all aspects of the assignments. So, if you want to work as a Linux admin, let me share one one quick tip: learn what Suse, Mandrake and Red Hat already offer as it is more than meets the eye.

Once you are confident that you know the above inside-out and can deploy it in a variety of roles using a variety of authentication schemes on a heterogeneous network that may or may need to meet high availability and scalability numbers, then branch out to the esoteric and fun projects.

Of course, if you just want to play, then by all means.