Different Linux Distros

[flubbernugget]

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).

[Remilia Scarlet]

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.

[Csonicgo]

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.

[chungy]

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.

[Csonicgo]

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.

[chungy]

I didn't like Ubuntu even then, so *shrug*

[Csonicgo]

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.

[Xaser]

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

[Kira]

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.

[Bucket]

I haven't heard a good reason for Ubuntu being bad, other than it being different.

[exp(x)]

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.

[chungy]

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.

[shadow1013]

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

[chungy]

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.

[Kira]

And without the guy maintaining Kubuntu at Canonical because of lack of time.

[xepop]

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.

[shadow1013]

Well, yesterday I actually finally switched off Ubuntu (which was pissing me off badly) to openSUSE, and honestly, I like it alot.

[Remilia Scarlet]

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.

[Orchid87]

Go for Mint. It's the best desktop Windows alternative.