I have just loaded Red hat 7.0 version, and it is very good. You have to load it to experience its speed. I was just comparing it with the windows I have and the speed of Linux is just too good.
THE BEST PART, it reboots only one time while installing, and not even once when you are upgrading or adding packages. Compare it with Windows where you have to reboot even when loading a game, forget the number of times you reboot when you are installing the OS.
But, hold on, if you are the one looking for a user friendly one for your home or purely secreterial purpose, forget it. It is not that user friendly and little difficult to navigate. But, if you are a learner or a programmer, then I need not tell you how good it is.
For starters, it is difficult to load a Linux. One has to very careful with the partitions and file system slices.
Coming to the Red hat, it has every utility that Windows has. You have a Multimedia, Games, Notepad and a version of Wordpad. Infact, you can upgrade any packages. That would mean, you can load packages you want and avoid ones you dont really need. Well, you dont get this option with Office versions. You can load a Star Office, a product of Sun on this OS. Let me tell you, this is probably even better than MS Office. The Red hat provides you with 20 games, compare it with Office, which gives you only four. It has Screen Savers, Graphics and every thing you ask for. But, you need a little patience to run all these, as it might look slightly complicated for the starters.
You talk about security, Red hat provides you with a greater security than that of Windows. You cannot work without a Password and a User name, as it is mandatory unlike the Windows, where you can skip the security.
If you are working in a network environment, you will not get a better and secured OS than Linux. It is so dependable with very few bugs, and Red Hat incorporates all the Unix security systems.
All in all, I would suggest this to all of those Microsoft fans to load this and experience, this is a gem of OS