Advice on Switching Linux

[trivialpackets]

Hey all, I'm looking to reconfigure my whole hard drive, as much of a pain as that is oging to be. I'm going to reinstall windows as Fat32 to give me the ability to write to this partition from linux with 20 gb, 20 to my ubuntu, and the remaining for my experimentation with other linux distros. I do this, as my drive to experiment has caused me to copy over ubuntu in the past, and I seem to always come back. But anyways, the advice part.

Any advice as to what operating systems I should use as my testing OS's? Just throw some out there. Looking for free of course, but something that is good for experimentation that my be of use in a coroporate environment? Anyone out there using Linux/BSD distros in professional uses that you coudl recommend? I'm just looking for info on something that can be of use as experience in later job scenerios. Thanks all if that made any sense.

[jasmuz]

Hey all, I'm looking to reconfigure my whole hard drive, as much of a pain as that is oging to be. I'm going to reinstall windows as Fat32 to give me the ability to write to this partition from linux with 20 gb, 20 to my ubuntu, and the remaining for my experimentation with other linux distros. I do this, as my drive to experiment has caused me to copy over ubuntu in the past, and I seem to always come back. But anyways, the advice part.

Any advice as to what operating systems I should use as my testing OS's? Just throw some out there. Looking for free of course, but something that is good for experimentation that my be of use in a coroporate environment? Anyone out there using Linux/BSD distros in professional uses that you coudl recommend? I'm just looking for info on something that can be of use as experience in later job scenerios. Thanks all if that made any sense.
If you really want to loose your kaboodle installing....use Gentoo

[Grue]

You could try QNX :)

Download here:
http://www.qnx.com/download/swgroup.html?programid=7812

More info here:
http://www.openqnx.com/

Why QNX? To say you've done something different. Not to bash Linux or BSD, but everybody who likes to geek out sometimes, have done both (maybe not BSD, but still). QNX is something different and in my humble oppinion, interestning.

Other stuff to try out are:

Plan9: http://www.cs.bell-labs.com/plan9dist/

Syllable: http://www.syllable.org/

There is a nice live cd of Syllable here (http://www.syllable-livecd.info/).

Have fun :).

On a quick-note, you probably will find that Syllable or QNX is the most usable ;).

Update:

Oops, almost forgot about MenuetOS. An operating system written in 32 bit Assembly: http://www.menuetos.org/

Fits nicely on a floppy disk :).