[Tfug] Filesystem/Distro suggestions?

[Chad Woolley]

Hi,

I used to be active in this group years ago, and just rejoined now.
I'm a software developer, but I do a lot of sysadmin work (being a
jack of all trades is job security!).  I'm far from a guru, but I'm
getting better all the time.  I guess I'm newbie-to-intermediate in
most things (it's all relative)...

Just about a year ago, I went to a linux system for my main dev box.
I picked Redhat FC4, and did a full install, mainly because that was
similar to the production systems I was developing on (I've since left
that job).

I was happy at first, but over the last year my system has become less
and less stable, and I'm about to reinstall.  For months, my
filesystem (1 sata drive, ext3, one partition) has been periodically
going read-only, and I have to manually fsck -y on reboot to fix it.
Well, this morning, it happened again and this time it took several
important directory trees with it - MOST of the important stuff was
backed up or in source control, so it's not too bad :)

Anyway, I'd like some suggestions for how to set up my new box.
Here's what I know I want:

* Software RAID 1 (I already have 2 new sata drives, I'm gonna install
them, and dual boot so I can mount my old drive and pull the data off
at my leisure)
* A distro that installs a nice gui and sets up some useful tools and
file associations.  I don't want to spend time manually installing and
configuring all my desktop tools - I barely have enough time to keep
up with software development.  I'd just like my sound, video,
openoffice, etc to work.  I currently have Gnome and KDE (as part of
the full FC4 install), and run XFCE as my window manager.  I like
XFCE, and I like the Gnome menu, and I like some of the KDE utils.
However, it would be nice if I could have something that played MPEGs
out of the box, for example.  The RH FC4 install made Totem movie
player the default, which seems crappy because I have never seen it
successfully be able to play a single video file.

I'm leaning toward Ubuntu, which I use for server installs.  I like
Debian/Ubuntu and all their apt repos, but I've never used the Ubuntu
desktop install.

QUESTIONS:
* What filesystem is the MOST reliable (I'll be running it on Raid 1)?
 XFS?  JFS?  Ext3?  I've got a fast box, so I'm not too concerned
about performance.
* What's a Debian-based distro that installs a nice desktop with
useful utilities that are set up correctly, has correct file
associations, and "just works"?

Anyway, it's good to be back.  I'll try to drop in for a meeting soon!

-- Chad