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What's your favourite Linux distro?

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What's your poison?
Ubuntu 41%  41%  [ 15 ]
Debian 16%  16%  [ 6 ]
Fedora 8%  8%  [ 3 ]
OpenSUSE 3%  3%  [ 1 ]
Slackware 5%  5%  [ 2 ]
Other (please post and tell us more) 27%  27%  [ 10 ]
Total votes : 37

Asp-Z
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19 Dec 2011, 7:39 am

And why? :)

I'm experimenting with Linux at the moment, might even have to use it for my main OS at some point fairly soon.



Fogman
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19 Dec 2011, 11:55 am

Currently Debian Squeeze, because it's like Ubuntu minus the instability and the bugs. FWIW, of all of the Named distros that you have mentioned, two of them are stable Distro's, (Debian and Slackware), all of the others are technically betaware. Ubuntu is based on Debian Wheezy. Feedback garnered from Fedora and Open Suse allow these companies to decide what and how they will build their commercial releases, and charge mainstream SysV for prices software that is cost free to end users under the guise of support. --Debian OTOH, does not do this.


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Asp-Z
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19 Dec 2011, 11:56 am

Fogman wrote:
Currently Debian Squeeze, because it's like Ubuntu minus the instability and the bugs. FWIW, of all of the Named distros that you have mentioned, two of them are stable Distro's, (Debian and Slackware), all of the others are technically betaware. Ubuntu is based on Debian Wheezy. Feedback garnered from Fedora and Open Suse allow these companies to decide what and how they will build their commercial releases, and charge mainstream SysV for prices software that is cost free to end users under the guise of support. --Debian OTOH, does not do this.


So Debian is your recommendation?

I had a play with it in a virtual machine yesterday and I got the impression it'd be a difficult OS to run unless I learnt a lot more than I currently do about how Linux works. Then again, that could be fun :D



Fogman
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19 Dec 2011, 12:23 pm

Asp-Z wrote:
Fogman wrote:
Currently Debian Squeeze, because it's like Ubuntu minus the instability and the bugs. FWIW, of all of the Named distros that you have mentioned, two of them are stable Distro's, (Debian and Slackware), all of the others are technically betaware. Ubuntu is based on Debian Wheezy. Feedback garnered from Fedora and Open Suse allow these companies to decide what and how they will build their commercial releases, and charge mainstream SysV for prices software that is cost free to end users under the guise of support. --Debian OTOH, does not do this.


So Debian is your recommendation?

I had a play with it in a virtual machine yesterday and I got the impression it'd be a difficult OS to run unless I learnt a lot more than I currently do about how Linux works. Then again, that could be fun :D


Yes, provided that one of the first things that you do when you get it is enable the 'Non-Free' , and add the third Party Multimedia Repositories. It works much like Ubuntu, though there is no sudo apt-get install (application) . Instead you run an
-su enter password, enter, and run aptitude get-install (application)


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19 Dec 2011, 12:28 pm

The only one I've used in Linux Mint, which I like. It's based off of Ubuntu, but has a bunch of modifications which the Mint community feel make it easier to use. Unfortunately, the most recent version uses GNOME 3 as the default desktop environment. I don't like it. It's pretty, but not nearly as customizable as GNOME 2 was. Which would't be quite so much of a problem if they'd designed it right. They do feature MATE (a fork of GNOME 2) but that is very new and still somewhat unstable. I'm using MATE myself, but I've been finding it a bit frustrating and I wouldn't recommend it to someone who's new to Linux. Mind you, in that case you wouldn't have any experience with GNOME 2 so maybe you wouldn't mind GNOME 3 so much. And certain features still aren't available for it. Of course, you could get the XFCE version or the KDE version and use one of those desktop environments instead.



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19 Dec 2011, 12:29 pm

PS: I started a similar thread a few months back. You'll find that you'll get as many opinions as posters.



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19 Dec 2011, 12:42 pm

AstroGeek wrote:
The only one I've used in Linux Mint, which I like. It's based off of Ubuntu, but has a bunch of modifications which the Mint community feel make it easier to use. Unfortunately, the most recent version uses GNOME 3 as the default desktop environment. I don't like it. It's pretty, but not nearly as customizable as GNOME 2 was. Which would't be quite so much of a problem if they'd designed it right. They do feature MATE (a fork of GNOME 2) but that is very new and still somewhat unstable. I'm using MATE myself, but I've been finding it a bit frustrating and I wouldn't recommend it to someone who's new to Linux. Mind you, in that case you wouldn't have any experience with GNOME 2 so maybe you wouldn't mind GNOME 3 so much. And certain features still aren't available for it. Of course, you could get the XFCE version or the KDE version and use one of those desktop environments instead.


There's always the LXDE/OpenBox desktop which uses less resources than XFCE, however my main problem with LinuxMint is that when you on the internet and you do a search, you are searching through LinuxMint's search which features paid advertising, which seems to be quite Spyware-ish on the part of LinuxMint's DevTeam to me.


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AstroGeek
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19 Dec 2011, 12:50 pm

Fogman wrote:
AstroGeek wrote:
The only one I've used in Linux Mint, which I like. It's based off of Ubuntu, but has a bunch of modifications which the Mint community feel make it easier to use. Unfortunately, the most recent version uses GNOME 3 as the default desktop environment. I don't like it. It's pretty, but not nearly as customizable as GNOME 2 was. Which would't be quite so much of a problem if they'd designed it right. They do feature MATE (a fork of GNOME 2) but that is very new and still somewhat unstable. I'm using MATE myself, but I've been finding it a bit frustrating and I wouldn't recommend it to someone who's new to Linux. Mind you, in that case you wouldn't have any experience with GNOME 2 so maybe you wouldn't mind GNOME 3 so much. And certain features still aren't available for it. Of course, you could get the XFCE version or the KDE version and use one of those desktop environments instead.


There's always the LXDE/OpenBox desktop which uses less resources than XFCE, however my main problem with LinuxMint is that when you on the internet and you do a search, you are searching through LinuxMint's search which features paid advertising, which seems to be quite Spyware-ish on the part of LinuxMint's DevTeam to me.

There are ways to remove that. I've never been bothered enough myself. Also, they have since changed to a different search engine (Duck Duck Go it's called) that supposedly doesn't keep track of your search phrases. Or something. Strangely I still get the Google search from MATE. Also, don't most distros have a similar payed advertising search tool?



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19 Dec 2011, 1:05 pm

Fogman wrote:
Asp-Z wrote:
Fogman wrote:
Currently Debian Squeeze, because it's like Ubuntu minus the instability and the bugs. FWIW, of all of the Named distros that you have mentioned, two of them are stable Distro's, (Debian and Slackware), all of the others are technically betaware. Ubuntu is based on Debian Wheezy. Feedback garnered from Fedora and Open Suse allow these companies to decide what and how they will build their commercial releases, and charge mainstream SysV for prices software that is cost free to end users under the guise of support. --Debian OTOH, does not do this.


So Debian is your recommendation?

I had a play with it in a virtual machine yesterday and I got the impression it'd be a difficult OS to run unless I learnt a lot more than I currently do about how Linux works. Then again, that could be fun :D


Yes, provided that one of the first things that you do when you get it is enable the 'Non-Free' , and add the third Party Multimedia Repositories. It works much like Ubuntu, though there is no sudo apt-get install (application) . Instead you run an
-su enter password, enter, and run aptitude get-install (application)


I was able to use apt-get when I installed it on a VM, but I couldn't sudo anything, I had to use su- as you describe.



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19 Dec 2011, 4:43 pm

I use and recommend giving Arch Linux a try. Its a rolling release (meaning it keeps up with the latest stable software as it is released), it has got a great community on the forums if you need help, it has got great documentation for new comers. Slackware and Gentoo are fun, but I think it would too much of a shock for a new comer.

Fogman wrote:
Yes, provided that one of the first things that you do when you get it is enable the 'Non-Free' , and add the third Party Multimedia Repositories. It works much like Ubuntu, though there is no sudo apt-get install (application) . Instead you run an
-su enter password, enter, and run aptitude get-install (application)
You can always install sudo if its not already installed and edit in your username to the sudoers file in /etc



Asp-Z
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19 Dec 2011, 4:51 pm

lxuser wrote:
I use and recommend giving Arch Linux a try. Its a rolling release (meaning it keeps up with the latest stable software as it is released), it has got a great community on the forums if you need help, it has got great documentation for new comers. Slackware and Gentoo are fun, but I think it would too much of a shock for a new comer.


Is Arch Linux good for newcomers? Doesn't seem to even have a GUI installer. I know the very basics of the command line (I can run uptime, sudo, apt-get, and cd, and view man pages for everything else), but that's basically it. I would certainly be interested in learning more, however.

Quote:
You can always install sudo if its not already installed and edit in your username to the sudoers file in /etc


I actually couldn't get into the sudoers file, it told me I didn't have the permissions even when I was in an admin account, and you can't get into root in the desktop environment. I guess I'd have to use a command line text editor, which is part of the whole "learning more" thing I guess :P



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19 Dec 2011, 5:17 pm

AstroGeek wrote:
Also, don't most distros have a similar payed advertising search tool?


No, actually.


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AstroGeek
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19 Dec 2011, 5:40 pm

Fogman wrote:
AstroGeek wrote:
Also, don't most distros have a similar payed advertising search tool?


No, actually.

I could have sworn Ubuntu did though, last time I was using it on as school computer. Maybe I'm mistaken. In any case, Mint and Ubuntu would hardly constitute "most."



lxuser
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19 Dec 2011, 6:28 pm

Asp-Z wrote:
lxuser wrote:
I use and recommend giving Arch Linux a try. Its a rolling release (meaning it keeps up with the latest stable software as it is released), it has got a great community on the forums if you need help, it has got great documentation for new comers. Slackware and Gentoo are fun, but I think it would too much of a shock for a new comer.


Is Arch Linux good for newcomers? Doesn't seem to even have a GUI installer. I know the very basics of the command line (I can run uptime, sudo, apt-get, and cd, and view man pages for everything else), but that's basically it. I would certainly be interested in learning more, however.
Its called reading documentation. Even if is there is no GUI installer it has a clear lay out for newcomers to understand. Also the default configurations work for most people, its just us power users who like to toy around with them.

Quote:
Quote:
You can always install sudo if its not already installed and edit in your username to the sudoers file in /etc


I actually couldn't get into the sudoers file, it told me I didn't have the permissions even when I was in an admin account, and you can't get into root in the desktop environment. I guess I'd have to use a command line text editor, which is part of the whole "learning more" thing I guess :P
Well there is a way of being able to login as root, but you'll have to do some homework. Also what is so scary about the command line? The text editor part is the same its just that is launched in a terminal, I recommend using nano because its easy to use for newcomers.



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19 Dec 2011, 6:47 pm

Debian, hands down. Rock-solid stable, and easily the most stringent quality control standards of any Linux distro. Also a more comprehensive feature list than you will find anywhere else.

Asp-Z wrote:
So Debian is your recommendation?

I had a play with it in a virtual machine yesterday and I got the impression it'd be a difficult OS to run unless I learnt a lot more than I currently do about how Linux works. Then again, that could be fun :D

Difficult how? It's much easier to set up and run than Windows. Ubuntu or Mint might be simpler for someone who has no idea what they're doing, but any reasonable computer-literate person should be able to handle Debian.

I would not recommend Arch to newcomers. It has amazing documentation, but it would still be a bit disconcerting for the uninitiated.


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19 Dec 2011, 6:48 pm

Redacted



Last edited by nat4200 on 19 Apr 2012, 5:39 am, edited 1 time in total.