Although we wanted a workstation version of Linux for this group test, RedHat chose to send us the Professional Server edition. Essentially, the main software is the same, and the workstation CDs are even included in the pack. For comparison purposes, we've listed both the Deluxe Workstation and Professional Server in our feature table.

The reputation of RedHat as an OS for servers is far-reaching. RedHat boasts on the packaging that '72 percent of the 850,000 Web sites world-wide running on Linux, run on RedHat Linux'. It certainly is a very professionally presented package, with good documentation and a mountain of software to rival even SuSE Linux. One neat touch in the Server version is a small credit card-sized bootable CD with 30MB worth of Linux programs, designed for System Administrators (we'd recommend giving this CD a miss if you're not an expert, although it looks pretty funky!).

In installation, RedHat 7 posed no problems. It uses a plain but functional graphical installer, and gives you the choice of which graphical desktop environments to install, offering both KDE and Gnome, which are the two most commonly used and widely supported. Since RedHat 7 is among the newest of the distributions reviewed here, it comes as no surprise that it also offers among the best hardware support.

If you intend to use Linux primarily as a server, you might find that it is worth the extra money for the server edition. Once you have it, of course, you can also install it on a new PC as a workstation and play some of the included games, such as Railroad Tycoon II, Descent 3, SimCity 3000...