Have tried several linux versions...
About a year ago, I tried several major distros, Fedora, Mint, Debian, CentOS, Scientific Linux,
Ubuntu was the only one that worked with out issue, ie found all the drivers, had no errors etc on initial install for my laptop a 2010 Dell XPS running an i7 chip. Normally I double and triple boot my machines. The laptop has win7 and Ubuntu on it now, but I almost never use the windows because, well why?
Have also installed the AMP stack, gcc, samba and did a 5 disk raid 5 server that boots from a 6th disk with Ubuntu. Also ran/owned a windows computer repair shop as a primary source of income for 5 years. Ubuntu IMHO is a very good OS. It lags in keeping up with the latest releases of some of the programs I use, MySQL, PHP, etc and I have swithced to CentOS for my local intranet web server. That said, to run the latest version of Joomla on that server requred the Fedora extended repository. Fedora seems to be in a bit of a stall right now and Scientific Linux is just another RH clone. I am personally more creeped out by the fact that Scienfitc Linux rips off RH but is essentailly a government project. In addition even at this time, to my knowelege, I could be wrong as I have not tested everyting in a while, Ubuntu is the only one using the 3.x kernal. Also Fedora, and CentOS at the moment do not have sperate server install distros. Even if they are still good OS es if you have a need for what they do best.
The bottom line is that you could make an argument for Mac, a BSD variant, but if price means anything Ubuntu has to be rated as one of the top operating systems available today. And yes it has graphic programs and a video editing program. I use GIMP, INK, and Font Forge and yes I have windows machines where I run Adobe CSSx and Corel Draw X, MS Office and more when I need them. Guess what? One size doesn't fit all. I have a subcompact car and a pickup truck. I don't go to the movies in the pickup and I dont haul trash to the dump in my gas saver. Does anyone flip out over that?
