"Brian McLinden" <blm987@yahoo.com> wrote:
Newbie here. I am purchasing a system to learn Linux with by multi-booting. [...]
Brian, To what end? Are you interested on a personal geek-toy level, or do you see this as a career enhancment? Are you most interested in ease-of-use and features for end-users, or as a network/system administrator? Do you want to develop software, or stricly use end-user apps? Each distribution has relative strenghts and weaknesses in each of these areas. If yuo're trying to replace your Windows desktop, you'll have different priorities than if you're trying to learn "Enterprise" systems support.
[...] I want to learn with diverse systems that are easy to modify/reconfigure/ maintain/upgrade after the box arrives. Would you say this a good mix of distros fo initial learning purposes, or would you suggest I consider another mix or approach--and why?
I would second Matt's recommendations to pick one first (few are "bad"), and get familiar with it before going all-out. I started with RedHat as my first serious Linux distribution, then, after I understood why I didn't like some RedHat conventions, had a much better idea of what I really wanted. I finally settled on Debian, but the bulk of the RedHat experience still applied. - Bob