[Ken11235]

I have an elderly Dell laptop I recently wiped clean. I ran out of XP CD's and it isn't quite strong enough for Vista, so I'm looking for an alternative. I'm looking for an Operating System, possibly a specific distribution of linux or unix, that is available for free online and is functional. It will need to be moderately well known and compatible with various server side programming languages (such as PHP). If you know of anything, please tell me.
Thanks

[The General]

ALL Linux distributions are compatible with every piece of software for every other one. Distributions are just packaged deals, sometimes with different methods for installing programs, but in the end, they are all exactly the same.

They are almost all totally free and available for download.

Oh and they do PHP and almost all web stuff, as Linux runs like 70% of webservers on the internet.

Here's a few links to some good distributions:

www.debian.org



... JakeC, finish off my list please. :classic:

[jakec]

The general is right,

Every Distro has options to install Programming Applications, however there are distros aimed toward programmers

Zenwalk
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=zenwalk

Fedora core
http://fedora.redhat.com/

poseidon Linux
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=poseidon

backpack Linux
http://daga.dyndns.org/projects/backpack/

Monoppix
http://www.monoppix.com/

Monodevelop
http://mono-live.com/

Knoppix
http://www.knoppix.net/

pollix Live CD
http://moe.tnc.edu.tw/~kendrew/pollix/

of course the Good ol' Slackware

http://www.slackware.com/

Gentoo
http://www.gentoo.org/

this is NOT a distro but for developers such as yourself worth a looksee

Xamapp
http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html

Now for a few personal reccomendations:

Kubuntu
http://www.kubuntu.org/

Mandriva
http://frontal2.mandriva.com/en/downloads/mirrors

Blag
http://www.blagblagblag.org/download/

is A one CD install of Fedora Core

OPENSUSE
http://www.opensuse.org/Download

Mephis
http://www.mepis.org/

If you don't like any of those, try the Linux Distro chooser:
http://www.zegeniestudios.net/ldc/

Hope this Helps

Jake

General hope this is to your satisfaction

[Ken11235]

Thanks, guys. I think I'll go with Fedora Core.