Current Linux Distro?, what to the trendy people use...

I admit I'm quite out of touch with Linux. The last time I played with it Red Hat was the popular new distro. However With all the doom and gloom talk of windows 8 my interest is peaked again. In order to cut down on research required to fiddle with it more; I'd greatly appreciate being filled in a bit on the following.

Which distros are considered good these days?
Did they ever get software to run games, and if so what is it called?
Is there a news/fan type site I should look at?
And lastly any thing that would make my fiddling more productive/fun?

Hmm a week and no bites at all. *Watches tumble weed roll across the barren forum* I know it's bad form to double post, but i saw no edit button. However I'll bring my inquire to a close by answering my own questions with half truths from weak research...

1. Start with Linux Mint. Its basically Ubuntu, but every one hates the way Ubuntu is taking it's interface.

2. Yep it's called WINE and it works some of the time. Keep in mind however that some anti-cheat software will flag it as a cheat and ban you for it.

3. distrowatch.com but it is going to be useless till you know what your looking for. Linux has decentralized to the point that there is no one big "help I'm new" site...

4. nope gods help you with your open source heathenism

And for those out of the loop with the windows 8 issue. Apparently they are cutting gadgets. Then re-branding them "metro apps," and your going to have to buy them exclusive through a "metro app store" run by Microsoft. Somehow several big game devs have warped this in to "all software is going to be a metro app we're soo doomed!" Admittedly tho it is nice to think that Microsoft could screw up to that extent...

1. Mint is kinda cool but only because of cinnamon, which you can install seperately . Personally, I use gentoo, and wouldn't think of switching, but it definitely isn't for the faint hearted. Ubuntu.. ehhh.

2. I wouldn't actually expect things to work with WINE . Your mileage may vary.

3. Depends on what you're looking for. Ubuntu is.. well.. like windows, only crappier. Gentoo is kinda difficult, but if you're serious about learning linux, you will learn with gentoo. Managing dependencies (something you will learn to hate, I promise) is far easier on Gentoo though. Debian is kinda like Ubuntu, but somewhat more bloated. Also, all distros except for Gentoo, Funtoo, and Slackware (that I know of) are distributed as binaries, which is sort of convenient as opposed to compiling, but there are serious disadvantages.

4. Yep. And it's a huge pain in the ass to find out which programs you want vs which ones are a million years old and/or garbage in some other way. On the other hand, you get pretty much arbitrary choice and more control than with any other OS. Oh, and people who write gnu man pages need to be shot .

Mint and cinnamon? 0.o that sounds like a horrid combination of spices! Thanks for the tip however. Will look into this gentoo. The blog post I was reading recommended mint, and ubuntu primarily for the Package Manager. Mostly as a "figure out software stuff with these then move on..."

I did kind of figure it's name was foreshadowing. The example my quick google provided of it working involved Diablo 3 players getting banned for it. Hopefully the Ouya, and strong anti windows 8 vibes will expand gaming on the OS. I really do love the open source concept, but the lack of games drove me away last time.

Thank you for the info. =)

Erm.. two things. One, RTFM. Two, good luck ^^;;

I use Kubuntu for most of my stuff. (GNOME's been crap for eons, KDE had some issues at the begining of 4 but has still been good to me).
To go with wine, there's a package called Play on Linux, Get it from their site though, as Ubuntu's repository is a little behind. It installs and manages multiple "bottles" (versions) of wine because some things behave better in older or 32bit versions. They also have some pre-generated scripts for more popular software.
For the last two questions... I point you to www.jupiterbroadcasting.com and the pod cast The Linux Action Show.

I partake of Linux Mint Debian addition with an unholy serving of Sid. With the power of SMXI i kissed apt-get good bye!

What's wrong with apt-get?

The problem with WINE is that a lot of stuff doesn't work right out of the box and unless you're a real techy you probably won't get it to work. If you're filling to fiddle and know how to use Google, then you can get a lot of things to work. I had WoW running on it but then well, stopped playing WoW.

Both Gentoo and Slackware have prebuilt distros that you can use. I've been out of the scene for a long time now but I don't know how anyone could just say Debian is a bloated Ubuntu. Slackware, Debian, Suse, and Red Hat were the original kids on the block. Debian continues to be a huge proponent of the GNU Foundation. Ubuntu was an attempt to use a Debian base and create a distro for the masses. I've played around with Slackware and Debian and my brother used Gentoo for a bit. The last distro I've used was Mint Debian Edition which I thought was pretty nice. I'm a Mac user now though and with it having terminal, I don't really have much use of linux anymore.