flubbernugget Posted February 11, 2012 Any thoughts on the different Linux distros out there? I've been looking into Linux as a Windows alternative. So far I've looked into Ubuntu and Mint because of their relative ease of use (Mint seems to be far better to me). 0 Share this post Link to post
Remilia Scarlet Posted February 11, 2012 I personally recommend Mint or Fedora. A few years ago it would have been Ubuntu or Fedora, but I personally think Ubuntu has been going downhill the past few releases. 0 Share this post Link to post
Csonicgo Posted February 11, 2012 Ubuntu has been kinda crappy in the UI department, but also in the core department... Last I read, they were using a new process scheduler that was absolutely unfair. 0 Share this post Link to post
chungy Posted February 11, 2012 Linux Mint seems to be pretty level-headed in providing normal users what they really want, especially beginners to Linux. It's about the only distro I can recommend in good conscious to beginners. I'd avoid Fedora, at least as a beginner. It's a bit of a conflicted distribution, they try to market it towards beginners but it really requires you to still get your hands dirty in system configuration and what not... it's barely even suitable for advanced users. I can't say I know of any particularly useful market for Fedora. For servers it's probably alright, but RHEL/CentOS is a much more obvious choice if you need something RPM-based. 0 Share this post Link to post
Csonicgo Posted February 11, 2012 What I want to know is, why was 2008 the peak year for linux distros? Ubuntu 8.04 LTS was the best Linux-based OS I ever used. It sucks that it's gone. 0 Share this post Link to post
chungy Posted February 11, 2012 I didn't like Ubuntu even then, so *shrug* 0 Share this post Link to post
Csonicgo Posted February 11, 2012 chungy said:I didn't like Ubuntu even then, so *shrug* It was the last release that ubuntu was still a "debian clone". I don't know what abomination it is now. it's awful from the core to the skin. 0 Share this post Link to post
Xaser Posted February 11, 2012 I have Debian on my netbook and like it a lot, though I have no real clue why I went with it. Definitely heard good things about Mint, though, and given Ubuntu's current direction, you may be best off going with Mint. But that's a totally blind suggestion on my part. :P 0 Share this post Link to post
Kira Posted February 11, 2012 Moved to Mint after the Ubuntu's Unity clusterf*ck, I love it. Got some problems with broadcom drivers that were fixed with b43-fwcutter though. 0 Share this post Link to post
Bucket Posted February 11, 2012 I haven't heard a good reason for Ubuntu being bad, other than it being different. 0 Share this post Link to post
exp(x) Posted February 11, 2012 Bucket said:I haven't heard a good reason for Ubuntu being bad, other than it being different. The reason I switched from it to Debian a few years ago was that Ubuntu was sloppy. They tried too hard to stick to their 6-month release cycles, and as a result, there were a lot more bugs than I cared to deal with. 0 Share this post Link to post
chungy Posted February 11, 2012 There's no real single item to pin Ubuntu on being "bad"; like exp said, it's just sloppy. All of the issues alone seem rather minor, but to put them all together with the distro as a whole, it feels rushed and amateurish. 0 Share this post Link to post
shadow1013 Posted February 12, 2012 I got really pissed with Ubuntu because they dropped support for OSS emulation on the last version (which I use, and prefer the API way over Alsa) and also, I thought I heard they're dropping KDE support... But that just might be rumors 0 Share this post Link to post
chungy Posted February 12, 2012 Canonical's laying off the Kubuntu staff; that variant is going to be maintained by a community instead. It's not going away, just different management style. 0 Share this post Link to post
Kira Posted February 12, 2012 And without the guy maintaining Kubuntu at Canonical because of lack of time. 0 Share this post Link to post
xepop Posted February 12, 2012 Just today installed Lubuntu for my parents old laptop. I tried Ubuntu first since linux isn't that familiar for me either, but 384M ram didn't agree. I didn't like chromium as a default browser, though, but I was too lazy to install anything else as it probably doesn't matter for them anyway. 0 Share this post Link to post
shadow1013 Posted February 13, 2012 Well, yesterday I actually finally switched off Ubuntu (which was pissing me off badly) to openSUSE, and honestly, I like it alot. 0 Share this post Link to post
Remilia Scarlet Posted February 13, 2012 shadow1013 said:Well, yesterday I actually finally switched off Ubuntu (which was pissing me off badly) to openSUSE, and honestly, I like it alot. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention openSuSE. That one is also pretty good. I personally still use Slackware, but that's just preference. 0 Share this post Link to post
Orchid87 Posted February 15, 2012 Go for Mint. It's the best desktop Windows alternative. 0 Share this post Link to post