Little help choosing a linux distro

[cbellew]

Hi everyone,

I would like someone to advise me on which distribution of linux would be best for my application.

I am the owner of a large book club looking to set up a machine (eg shuttle) to organise information and statistics about the book club users.

There would essentially be a swipe card reader connected to the machine which would allow users to sign in as they enter our library. The machine would then connect to an externally hosted database via the internet and send and retrieve information about the users and books they read.

There would also be another machine at the venue which would be connected to the primary machine via an ad-hoc wifi network. This would relay (send/recieve) similar information.

We will find someone to design the software ourselves but would need to machine to be only used for our software.

We have decided to choose linux as it is known to be secure and reliable but we are a bit daunted by the amount of linux distributions avaliable to choose from!

Thanks for your time,

Chris

[techieMoe]

Welcome! Yours is a very common question. We have put together a thread on the forum that offers quizzes, polls, and various educational material to try and help you determine which Linux is right for you.

http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/lin...e-posting.html

If you're interested in learning a bit more about Linux in general, try this thread:

http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/lin...ead-first.html

Happy hunting!

[LinuxZealot]

From the sounds of what you're looking for and based off of my limited experience, I would suggest Fedora. It's a well developed, stable, and secure distro that should be relatively easy to set up for your needs. It's phenomenal for databases and networking and makes a great "working" operating system. and since many major corporations use RedHat (from which Fedora is based) there are a large number of databasing and networking specialists trained in how to help you set your desired system up. therefore it shouldn't be too difficult finding any support that you need.

p.s. just some suggested reading. check out "Life of Pi" by Yann Martel. I just got done with it, it's probably one of the best books I've ever read.