On 2004-11-04 21:10:29 +0000 Jeremy Dales jeremy@thepeak.fsworld.co.uk wrote:
As requested, I'll try and outline why I am interested in Linux [...]
Welcome Jeremy. Thanks for the good introduction! I share your concerns about security. Recently there have been some interesting work about the ability of open free software development to fix bugs more quickly than closed proprietary software, such as the preprint at http://arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0306511 which may give you some hope on security.
Some distributions are much easier to drive than others and nearly every distribution has a slightly different emphasis. At least twice, I've chosen distribution by sitting down with a gift box of CDs and continuing until I find one that I like. I think it was Slackware the first time and Debian the second. (By the way, Slackware users, ftp://ftp.slackware.com/pub/slackware/slackware-current/PAT-NEEDS-YOUR-HELP.txt is an uncomfortable read.)
The text configuration files aren't usually too difficult, but there are good and bad pieces of software. I keep hoping that the worst ones will go away or get fixed, but there's a lot of inertia. Printing and emailing are the two worst categories, in my experience (yes, CUPS has a pretty web front-end, but sometimes you still have to wade through reams of config file).