Which Linux distribution

[holger krekel]

Jaroslav Gresula wrote:
> I've installed RH 7.3 recently and I'm pretty frustrated from their 
> approach to Python packages. It is almost impossible to switch to
> Python 2.x version since majority of their scripts is based on 1.5.x.
> I've already read some guides how to accomplish that but it is PITN.
> I'm about to switch to different distribution and that's my question.
> 
> What is your experience? What distribution would you recommend to me?
> My primary requirement on the distrubution is to have a nice Pyton
> environment with easy maintenance of multiple python versions.

If you are developer or often find yourself compiling from source code
you might try out 
    
    http://gentoo.org

their packaging system (portage) is written in python!  It's completly
based on source-code (tarballs) and it's very convenient to configure
dependencies and *easy* to integrate customizing patches.  You can e.G.
easily say that you don't want any GNOME or KDE stuff and packages
will not drag dependencies in!  It also produces the fastest installation 
possible because you can globally set options to use your specific processor 
features. Just my 2c, of course.

If you are not used to the command line then the installation 
may not be for you :-)  

    holger