Thats a very tough question. If you want a distro that is rpm
based then you have a lot of distros to compare if you truly want to do
things scientifcally I would throw one of the newer Fedoras or
RHEL distros on there and be done. Unless you are NASA or the
like, you probably aren't gonna be measuring meaningful distinctions
between the two. Something newer would be better in my opinion
since (unlike windows) the newer the distro the more of an expectation
of hardware compatibility you can have, and newer doesn't necessarily
equate to greedier, resource-wise. The newer the distro the more
flexibile and modular the whole os and kernel will be, not to menion
optimization which is a whole body of research all to itself.
Marc
