With more than 200 Linux distributions currently listed at Linux Online, it's perhaps an understatement to say that newcomers to the field face a broad array of choices. In addition to considering their own goals for Linux, however, potential users may also need to take other factors into account. Hardware considerations are often foremost among them. 'If you plan to run Linux on the sparc64 architecture,' for instance, 'I think there's only a small handful of distros that even support it, so that narrows it from the beginning,' said Michael Stutz, author of the 'Linux Cookbook.'"

Read on » Choosing a Desktop Linux Distro, Part 2: Installation and Support