Neill Newman neill@entora.co.uk writes:

At the end of the day, the best technical solution is not necessarly the best solution [...]

No, marketing has far too much influence. Why do you think we're heading up the creek at a rate of knots?

I don't want people thinking that the community is arguing amoungst itself as to which OS/distro is technically superiour.

But we *are* arguing about what is technically superior and it encourages innovation. If we try to deny that it happens, people will be repulsed when they discover these arguments going on. We need to set the agenda, not just try to answer others' points.

Use what is a good solution for the job, and if that is slackware, mandrake, *bsd, suse, debian then so be it..

Bah, pragmatist. Does your freedom and the benefits it brings mean nothing to you? (Notice that you include two freedom-impaired systems in your list...)