Originally posted by RoxnDox Mixed opinion on Linuxes. Fine for servers, technical applications, number crunchers, etc. Fine for geeks who love to fiddle around with their computers and customize them and enjoy the process. Ranges from "minor pain in the ass but usable" to "Oh F*CKING HELL NO!!!" when it comes to Joe Average User who wants a machine he can use with minimal work to set up and maintain in usable condition. Same can be said of the various attempts at desktops for Unixes, of course.
Yes indeed. There are way too many distributions that can be overwhelming. Some are harder to use than others. I've run Slackware, Gentoo, Arch Linux, & other distros that seemed a bit more complicated for me to use. Some require too much configuration. It gets annoying after a while, but I can see where some people like that. At the same time that can turn off some other users from trying Linux.
Originally posted by beachgardener Started with SuSe 9.1 and went on with openSUSE, I did install stacks of distros over time, even some of the BSD's (and various desktop managers, kde etc.), but went for and staying with a .deb style in LinuxMint, I like the simple design and layout of Cinnamon.
I'd like to try SolydXK and Elementary.
Originally posted by automorphism Started around 2005. Been using it ever since. I started with Ubuntu then moved to Linux Mint. I'm running Mint 18 XFCE edition now, and I use it for everything. I was thinking of trying FreeBSD though, just for fun. Before that I used Windows as it came with the computer, and I still use OS X from time to time as it is on my work computer, but I'm most productive on Linux. Just the thought of using a WM without window shading makes me shudder. And I love package management!
I usually tell first timers to run Linux Mint with the Cinnamon desktop or Ubuntu. I think Linux Mint is the most polished Linux distribution out there. It's really clean & very well designed. It's probably the closest thing to Windows as far as being polished goes. Everything works right out of the box. It comes with just about everything you need. I think it's more complete than Ubuntu. It's easy to keep it updated too. The update manager window makes the process easy & initially asks the user what kind of updates they want.
Then there is the option of using sudo apt-get update, sudo apt-get upgrade, sudo apt-get dist-upgrade, sudo apt-get autoremove at least once a month to keep everything in check. One has to pay a little bit of attention to the Y/N/I prompts as they come up in the updating process. Sometimes a sudo update-grub might be required to make sure that the grub is correct if one decides to update it with a new version.
Originally posted by lightbox These days it's split between CentOS, RHEL, or Oracle (at work) and Debian or Arch (at home). Ubuntu does double duty on occasion, but I'm not sure why. Just out of curiosity I guess. Same with Mint.
If I had to pick one it would probably be Debian.
Dabbled in FreeBSD as well, but I had no specific need for it. Again just curiosity and learning.
I like Debian for its stability. I think Debian & RHEL/CentOS are the supreme kings in that category. They are too stable. Hahaha! The stability does come at a cost of using older software that is heavily tested, though. This is where some issues start to arise when trying to use it with newer hardware or when you want the latest version of a specific software when using them as desktop environments. I think CentOS is a little farther behind in that respect. At least you can get backports on Debian, but even then, some of those backports are still a few versions behind.
As hardware & software are advancing, sometimes I get hiccups on Debian when trying to install it on a brand spanking new machine. I've had a hard time running Debian on my ASUS M32BC machine. It either loses the WIFI connection when getting the required software during the install or it loses the connection after everything is installed. Even running the latest firmware doesn't really help & I've tried just about everything. I don't have any issues whatsoever when running Fedora on that machine. That's why I have been using Fedora a bit more now. So far it has been very stable, doesn't require much configuration, & it comes with the latest version of Gnome. I guess I prefer the Gnome desktop over all others. MATE & Cinnamon are my next 2 picks. I have all the software I need on it & I only
dnf update --refresh &
dnf autoremove once a month. Heck! Even my wife loves the simplicity of it. She thinks it's more streamlined than Windows 10.