InfoWorld blogger Randall Kennedy has "the six month *nix itch," he says. It's been six months since he played with a Linux or UNIX distribution, and he's ready to try again. In this post, he discusses his options and then asks readers for their suggestions.

The last time he ventured into Linux waters, Kennedy tested Ubuntu 7.10, or Gutsy Gibbon. So maybe the place to start now is Ubuntu 8.04, Hardy Heron. It would be a smoother transition, he says, because he's familiar with Ubuntu. (As a side note, the newest Ubuntu won't be production-ready until next month, but it's available in beta now.) Gibbon was too buggy for Kennedy's taste, so that gives him pause on Heron. Even so, it's at the top of his "possibilities" list.

Other options include PC-BSD 1.5 -- UNIX has always intrigued him, Kennedy says -- and OpenSuSE 10.3. It doesn't sound as if he's all that optimistic about the latter, though:

I went down this road before, and I'm disappointed to see that not much has changed in six months. Perhaps I've been spoiled by Ubuntu's rapid release cycle. I really thought Novell would have released something newer by now.

Finally, Kennedy concedes there are myriad "wild card" options out there as well.

Judging from comments on the post, reader consensus is that Kennedy should explore something different. One suggests he should try Mac OS X to satisfy the UNIX side of the itch. Others mention Linux Mint, and still others suggest MEPIS. At least one reader also suggests Solaris 10 or OpenSolaris.