I am starting a new distro and a big part of it is the website. The description of it can be found at www.distro-project.org/about.php
There is a lot of stuff it has to do so I can't decide which language to use. I heard perl has tons of features, but at the same time the code can become quite messy, and with a lot of people working on it that could be bad. I have been thinking about ruby or python except i'm not sure which one would be better because it also has to interact with programs located on the users computer (when the actual distro part is done) and the background processes that interact with the user's computer for keeping their system stuff up2date, finding the best download servers, etc. So what do you guys think would be best for that?

I think you're likely to get a number of biased replies because everyone has their own favourite language  

You could do a great job in Perl which has so much power and flexibility it's untrue, but as you say you can use that power and flexibility to build really messy and hard to maintain code if you're not really self-disciplined.

Here in the UK (where are you located?), Ruby hasn't taken off to any critical mass level so you'll not find a great deal of help / support if you need it, but it is the language that's said to take all the best parts of Perl and put them into a modern, Object Oriented language.  I'm sure it's no co-incidence that the authors / developers of Perl 6 are talking / using a lot of Ruby too and I suspect that Perl 6 may displace Ruby's niche.

For computer professionals on a project which is gooing to grow and has maintainability as the key, I'm going to encourage you to use Python. It's not a "quick hack" language like Perl is but for a project that's going to grow and need maintenance and further development over the years, it's the one I would choose.

I teach all of these languages - of course I have my favourites, but hopefully my feedback my be less biased than most.  I also notice that you've directed me to a PHP page and ... PHP is another great language!

IF I were the one having to choose, I would probably select Python as my first choice, PHP second, Perl third and Ruby fourth based on what little I have been told and read but it's a close run thing and I don't have the full form book to know which particular horse should win!

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