Shining Arcanine wrote:As far as the spectrum of Linux distributions goes, Redhat Enterprise Linux and its clone CentOS are probably the best in terms of a "bug free" experience as far as Linux while Gentoo Linux's testing tree is probably the best in terms of get it done. No release of Ubuntu Linux is better than these distributions at either of these extremes. FreeBSD is a better option in my option than RHEL, but it is not a Linux distribution.
I think I'd put Debian (the stable release of course, not the testing/unstable branches) up there with RHEL/CentOS in terms of stability.
FWIW I don't think Ubuntu is *meant* to fill the niche at either extreme. It is clearly a compromise between stability and having the latest bleeding edge versions of stuff, with the non-LTS releases slanted farther towards the latter. It happens to be a compromise that works well for many people (myself included).