UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

I'm in the process of really comitting to learning a Unix or Linux OS/distro really well for career opportunities and to use as my main desktop OS. I've been mulling through the choices and I'm having a hard time. Maybe someone can help me. I'm not a noob and I have some FreeBSD and Slackware / Arch / Gentoo experience.

As far as the career opportunities go, the positions I'm looking at are no IT related per-se but somewhere in the middle with project management. They are certainly in financial services (where presumably Sun or AIX) are installed on the *servers*. I'm not aiming to do server admin or DBA work. Generally, the work would likely involve some reporting and documentation work, web editing. I'd also like to commit to learning Oracle. I think having some Unix or Linux skills in the industry anyways will be Very Handy. I'm pretty much done with remembering where to click the mouse to "master" Windows!

Anyways here's what I'm looking at.... (Also keeping in mind I'm probably going to be wiping Windows off my systems completely and using Unix or Linux I choose all the time for my desktop system.

I'm not trying to form strong opinions on the Pros/Cons just from my personal experience or research to date.

I have a Core 2 Quad desktop and a Core 2 laptop. I'm probably going to settle on one for both. Desktop is probably going to be file server anyways now. I don't need high performance OS if it comes down to difference in OS of choice won't matter.

So based on my needs and my current choices anyone have suggestions?

Packages/apps I will likely install and use: sed, awk, grep, nano or pico, X, e16 or pref e17, xfce, OpenOffice, gnuplot, gnu R, Oracle, Wine (iTunes if it works!, Office - Excel + Access for sure), firefox, thunderbird, MPlayer and probably a few multimedia apps. I'll need some KDE or Gnome libs too for some apps but I'm not interested in running KDE or Gnome desktop.

*note on Wine, if it ain't gonna work well for those apps, I will dual boot.

1) Linux (I probably prefer Slackware or Arch. I know RH is predominant but I didn't like or have been confused with /etc, directory structures and some nitty griity with RH).

Pro: Tends to have better driver support. WINE tends to be better supported. Easy Oracle installation (as compared to FreeBSD). Popular, well supported, lots of books, magazines tons of resources. Probably better for desktop. At least on Arch/Gentoo/Debian theres more packages available then in FreeBSD or Solaris but I don't need all the packages!

Cons: Mainly I find kernel updates tends to break apps and HW support. I find the Kernel is hard to compile there's always too many new and/or confusing choices (should I ever need to). I can't say I really know which filesystem to use and some are still not "stable". Sound support apparently still probs. Sound is important!

2) Free BSD (I admit if I choose BSD option I'd consider OpenBSD.

Pro: Also great package management. I tend to think the documentation is more thorough which is important in getting more advanced knowledge. There's lots of great books to learn from. I looked into BSD cert and it looks like a pretty thorough test of knowledge. I might see myself wanting to contribute to the community in the future for documentation.

Cons: Somewhat less HW support but good sound support. Probably not used as actively in desktop in industry. Has been perceived as beeing slower for desktop system.

3) Solaris.
Pros: Solaris Cert(s) are generally great to have on resume. Its tedious with lab exams not sure I'd go through with it but books standardize learning material and I looked at the Sun books ... I have to say very nice and clear writing. Easy(er) to install Oracle? ZFS (yeah FreeBSD has it too).

Cons: Probably not used as actively in desktop in industry. But generally used on servers. Long term support from Oracle. Are they going to drop it? Limited HW support. Long time between releases. More different in devices names, directories thank compared to FreeBSD and Linux. Much more limited packages.

AIX server only? So i'll skip it.

Thanks!

No one can pick an OS for you. It is your decision. What works for one person does not work for another. It is strictly a personal decision.

I am closing this thread because we support all UNIX and Linux OS here and don't pick one over the other for anyone.