For untold thousands of developers around the world, it's not a game. For solution providers and their customers, it's not a game.

But the world of desktop Linux has become increasingly competitive, increasingly important to the IT industry, and increasingly available for anyone to try.

So we decided to take a look at some of the best-known Linux desktops available and ask one overriding question: Put to the test of usability in a standard office environment, which is the best Linux desktop in the world?

Welcome to the inaugural edition of CMP Channel's The World Series of Linux.

As there are more than 176 Linux distributions, Test Center engineers selected the most popular distributions, Debian-based and RPM-based, for the World Series. The goal is to pit the best Debian-based distro against the best of the RPM-based distro for a final smackdown. The winner of the World Series will be crowned the champion.

Playing in the Debian League was Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon, Freespire (the free version of Linspire), and Xandros Professional Edition. The RPM-based distros, which we'll review in Round 2, include Novell (NSDQ:NOVL) SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10, PC Linux OS, and Fedora 7.

More Here

(Also: World Series of Linux: Our Methodology)