Hi,

i'm currently part of an apprenticeship becoming a IT specialist.
Because I'm already an electronic technician (finished apprenticeship) I can do this one in 2 years (normally you need 3).
Thing is, in school they started out with basic unix stuff (working with the shell) in the first year. Now I need to learn all that stuff until my school starts in september.
I'm already on my way using a virtual machine one of my teachers made (SUN Linux) with all the data I need to finish working through the script I got.
I also have a virtual Damn Small Linux.
I like working with unix systems, I currently have Ubuntu installed on my computer, but for some reason I'm not that fond of it anymore, I want to try something else.

Now I want to hear what to experts say
I've been browsing these forums for some time and I must say that it is very interesting and you guys really know what you talk about.

So:
1. What Linux Distribution do you think is the best and why is that so?
Which Linux do you use and why?
2. Is there a IRC channel or some chat connected to this forum?

I hope you can give me some useful infos here, maybe I can finally kill all of my windows pcs