In January 1996 price correlates with features and quality pretty well (as one would expect in a very competitive market). Your editor recommends paying the few extra dollars for a top-drawer CD-ROM distribution; this will pay off in fewer installation and administration hassles down the road.
I have used Yggdrasil Plug-and-Play and now run Red Hat. Both these distributions are excellent and deserve serious consideration from any Linux purchaser. Red Hat's RPM technology currently gives it, IMO, a technical edge over any other vendor; on the other hand, Yggdrasil's superior documentation, large collection of applications, and enlightened policy of sending free releases to freeware authors and dedicating part of the price of each CD-ROM to financially supporting freeware, all highly recommend it. However, these opinions should not be interpreted as an unconditional endorsement; different Linux distributions are optimized for different needs, and yours may well be best served by some other distribution. There is no substitute for doing your own evaluation based on experience and the data in this guide.
I (esr) have no financial connection to any Linux vendor, nor have I accepted any renumeration or perquisites from any vendor other than free product for review.
Disclaimer: We make absolutely no guarantee as to the correctness of the information, prices, and ordering details given in this document. Check the last-modified field of each to get an idea of its currency. Furthermore, unless otherwise stated the Linux software comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.
Feel free to mail any questions or comments about this HOWTO to
Eric S. Raymond, esr@snark.thyrsus.com. Please do not
send me general Linux questions or requests for help in
choosing a distribution unless you're willing to hire me at
normal consulting rates; I don't have time to deal with them,
and I try to put everything I know about choosing a
distribution in this document.
And now for the good stuff.