Not sure how those questions would indicate, you didn't specify. I could see some thinking "recent" technology means "good", but my personal experience provides little evidence to correlate "new technology" with good. I could even make a case that it's a red flag. (I worked on a disastrous project where by fiat we had to develop with
Code reviews? Meh. Some think they're doing code review, they're not... or they're horrible at it.
I always ask what their turnover is, and why the position being filled was vacated. YMMV.
Anyway, I remember downloading the dist, in "sections" (e.g., X11), each spanning a number of floppy disks with a grand total of 70+ floppies. Then from there I installed linux. If all went well, it usually took about a day to get it up and running, start (download) to finish (first full boot). (Keep in mind, this was in the day of ADSL.) Horrible.
These days, I grab random different ones I've seen recent reviews for and download and boot just for fun. Typically I just download the iso's and point a virtual CD drive from vmware or some virtual pc and boot and install. Much nicer, usually less than an hour.
Faves: Suse, Mandrake->Mandriva, Knoppixware (to save friends and family lost corrupted Windows data), Ubuntu (3 years ago, not today). Mint.
The issue comes up when Apple (or any other Microsoft) uses their monopoly in one area to leverage their position in another (think "shutting off the air supply to Netscape").
BYTE editors are people who separate the wheat from the chaff, and then carefully print the chaff.