I hear a lot about how Twitter is a bad concept, because the character limit means things can be oversimplified, taken out of context, and posted without a source. I've never used it myself, but recently I've been wondering if it can be useful to me. For example, some bloggers I follow might post some insights on Twitter that they don't anywhere else, and help me discover other interesting blogs.

Have you found a good use for Twitter besides as a social network or news aggregator?

I've been running Linux for a little over a year now and, after a recent conversation on Tildes, I decided that I need to wipe and re-install so that I can enable full-disk encryption.

Thus, right now I'm shopping around for a distro and trying out different live environments to find something that works for me. My question isn't necessarily for right now though (my hardware is old enough that I'm definitely going to need to use a lightweight distro, which severely limits my options). It's more for the future, in that I plan to replace this computer in a year or two with something up-to-date, which means I'll be able to run any distro under the sun! Any!

So, I'm curious to hear from people who have found their "forever distro." What do you run for your everyday use, and why? Also, what's your level of technical expertise? I am very far from a power-user at present, but I'd like to be somewhere closer to that when I replace my computer.