27 replies to this topic

[Alessandro17]

I have decided to close the old "Linux Distributions, Which is the best?" thread because I feel that it doesn't fully reflect today's tendencies. Some distros in that poll are obsolete/discontinued, some others aren't even mentioned.
Also, everybody will get a new chance to vote again.
I have done my best to remember the most important ones, put in alphabetical order (all done in the middle of the night   )
If you feel something is missing/wrong please let me know. Happy voting.

[verdant]

Alessandro17, on Dec 31 2010, 05:07 AM, said:

I have decided to close the old "Linux Distributions, Which is the best?" thread because I feel that it doesn't fully reflect today's tendencies. Some distros in that poll are obsolete/discontinued, some others aren't even mentioned.
Also, everybody will get a new chance to vote again.
I have done my best to remember the most important ones, put in alphabetical order (all done in the middle of the night   )
If you feel something is missing/wrong please let me know. Happy voting.

In your poll I would include Pinguy OS as a Ubuntu variant which is rapidly gaining in popularity after continuing to receive a number of very good reviews.......causing some to even switch from Mint Linux........

[KUGLee]

I prefer Arch Linux, because it has a great package manager (pacman).  Someone said that Arch Linux is just a framework for pacman. Arch isn't as customizable as Gentoo, but it still has the freedom of wide configuration, and don't have to spend hours building packages. Vanilla packages can be installed, just a pkgbuild is needed, and Arch User Repository (AUR) is also great.

[Alessandro17]

Difficult for me to choose, because there are at least 3 distributions  I like in that list: Debian, PCLinuxOS, Mandriva.
I voted for Debian because it is the only one which has never really disappointed me in so many years, and the only one which has always got better (with some objections from my part, like renaming Firefox, Seamonkey and Thunderbird or not putting non-free firmware on the installation media).

Mandriva is very good overall, but some releases have been very buggy, and its future is uncertain.

PCLinuxOS is quite good now, but it wasn't always so. Also, it is a small(ish) distribution developed by a small team. I can't imagine what would happen if one day Texstar had enough of it.

The biggest disappointment in my long experience as a Linux user has been openSUSE. Since the great years before Novell bought it, I have seen it getting worse all the time, slowly but constantly.

BTW: added Pinguy OS.

Edit: Mandriva seems to have been replaced by Mageia. The problem I have with the "Mandriva family" distributions is that they still use GRUB 1, which seems unable to deal with complex multibooting configurations.

Edited by Alessandro17, 02 April 2013 - 10:13 AM.

[verdant]

Alessandro17, on Jan 1 2011, 07:54 PM, said:

Difficult for me to choose, because there are at least 3 distributions  I like in that list: Debian, PCLinuxOS, Mandriva.
I voted for Debian because it is the only one which has never really disappointed me in so many years, and the only one which has always got better (with some objections from my part, like renaming Firefox, Seamonkey and Thunderbird or not putting non-free firmware on the installation media).

Mandriva is very good overall, but some releases have been very buggy, and its future is uncertain.

PCLinuxOS is quite good now, but it wasn't always so. Also, it is a small(ish) distribution developed by a small team. I can't imagine what would happen if one day Texstar had enough of it.

The biggest disappointment in my long experience as Linux user has been openSUSE. Since the great years before Novell bought it, I have seen it getting worse all the time, slowly but constantly.

BTW: added Pinguy OS.

Thanks for adding Pinguy OS.........I am enjoying using it and setting up Conky for it........my present faves are Pinguy OS and Ubuntu Studio on my PC......but also I am also trying to install Linux MintPPC 9.1 on a PowerBook G3 laptop currently........I also have an old AMD Athlon PC running standard Ubuntu........

[Alessandro17]

655 views and 9 votes?
We have a different kind of users compared to 5 years ago. People who hope, "demand" almost, to get as much as possible and give absolutely nothing in return. No sense of community at all.

[verdant]

Alessandro17, on Jan 29 2011, 09:14 PM, said:

655 views and 9 votes?
We have a different kind of users compared to 5 years ago. People who hope, "demand" almost to get as much as possible and give absolutely nothing in return. No sense of community at all.

I have to agree.......there is certainly more "demand" for "free solutions on a plate" with even the "knife and fork" being expected as well.........evidence of how much our global society is becoming focussed on just "consuming" rather than "planting, consuming and then re-planting"......

[Alessandro17]

verdant, on Feb 1 2011, 07:12 PM, said:

I have to agree.......there is certainly more "demand" for "free solutions on a plate" with even the "knife and fork" being expected as well.........evidence of how much our global society is becoming focussed on just "consuming" rather than "planting, consuming and then re-planting"......

Today I had a user complaining because his "should I backup my BIOS before flashing it?"  topic was removed.
Can you imagine that?

[michael.su]

I voted for Ubuntu at the time but after reading this poll, I gave PinguyOS a shot. Now I'm hooked.
(I like Mint too)
Pinguy OS comes bundled with a great collection of apps/features :-)
however, I have one issue with both Ubuntu and PinguyOS and I think it is Kernel related....

It's a really nasty bug that causes both OS to lock up when using specific dvd burning combo drives.
within a minute of mounting any disc in these drives....the system locks up solid :-(
I have 2 different drives that have this issue but when I use a regular DVD drive or CD writer everything is fine.
I've researched this quite a bit and no-one seems to have found an answer :-(

[MacFanatic76]

Definitely - Gentoo, so I am the only "voice" for it, for now

[apple apple]

Loving Debian. I don't understand how so many others can like/prefer a "distro" so much that is basically a bloated dressed up version of debian.

I do have to add however, that suspend still sucks with debian. Not much of an issue for me since I've gone to ssd, but I wish it was something that worked.

[Alessandro17]

MacFanatic76, on May 8 2011, 11:55 AM, said:

Definitely - Gentoo, so I am the only "voice" for it, for now

As you probably remember there was a time when Gentoo users were quite vocal  
It feels like ages ago, now.
I never really liked it. I have always been your typical Debian user, thus I love the comfort of apt-get and binary packages, + Debian rock solid stability.

[apple apple]

There doesn't seem to be many nix users here. Maybe its just because this is primarily an Apple forum... and yes I am an Apple fan. Linux rocks! Shame more people don't give it a try. I think most people stay away just because they think its too complicated. Just for the record, my four year old daughter uses Ubuntu on her Emac (sporting a pentium4). Uses it every day.

[Alessandro17]

apple apple, on May 17 2011, 09:34 PM, said:

Just for the record, my four year old daughter uses Ubuntu on her Emac (sporting a pentium4). Uses it every day.

[radiking]

i would say i was a linux fanatic it all started 4 years ago i had purchased digit magazine and there was opensuse linux mint and ubuntu included.thats where all the experimenting started i was really bored of xp and wanted to try something new so installed 7.04 version of ubuntu and hence forth the adventure

i did a little research and landed at distrowatch.com i downloaded and tried almost all distros the most famous ones..it took me about a month to understand the basics of linux coz i was so used to windows not bothered to learn any commands googled for most of the stuff and found the answers atleast most of them

i like ubuntu because its kinda easy to use i mean the gnome desktop and the 3d compiz manager with various customization it impressed me a lot. other distros were confusing installing apps and managing them for a new user like me who was/is  a loyal fan of microsoft . ubuntu is very much customizable i even did make it look n feel like mac

there is one more version of ubuntu similar to pinguy its called super os.it comes with lots good stuff with less bloatware .
i am having hard time installing pinguy os seems to be have a problem with my video card.   i made a great mistake of buying a laptop with ATi gfx card

[verdant]

apple apple, on 17 May 2011 - 09:34 PM, said:

There doesn't seem to be many nix users here. Maybe its just because this is primarily an Apple forum... and yes I am an Apple fan. Linux rocks! Shame more people don't give it a try. I think most people stay away just because they think its too complicated. Just for the record, my four year old daughter uses Ubuntu on her Emac (sporting a pentium4). Uses it every day.

Part of the problem when people try linux and then get put off by it, from my personal experience, often relates to graphics card support for *nix.

For example, the latest xorg version no longer supporting the graphics card, or problems with proprietary and/or open source drivers etc. generating display issues which range from an inability to set the desired display resolution all the way to a black screen on bootup after installing linux......

For example, taking Ubuntu as the linux distro most likely to have been heard of by newcomers to linux, nVidia and/or ATI graphics cards and xorg.conf files that worked in Ubuntu 9.04 stopped working 9.10 and in 10.04, and what worked for 10.04 no longer worked in 10.10, or what worked for 11.04 and 11.10, does not work in 12.04.....and so on....

For many potential *nix users, they are hoping that using linux will be a way of "rejuvenating" and "reusing" older hardware that is made "obsolete" by the ever increasing hardware restrictions of the latest OS X version (and Windows version to a lesser extent), and yet the ability of linux to readily work on older hardware especially older video cards seems to be decreasing......thus, since the PC display is the users "eye' into the system, many give up on linux when they encounter display issues, e.g. resolution setting, using multiple displays etc.

[Alessandro17]

Very true. The inability to set the desired display resolution has "always" been a problem.
But I suspect the decline of the 2 main desktop environments (KDE 4 and Gnome 3) also plays a major role.

[fos]

I agree. Setting up the X Window display setting has always been a PITA. In the early days when you had to manipulate the config file directly with a text editor was very painful. Added to that, you could fry your display if the settings were wrong. That is just one of the boon and/or bane issues of having so many third party graphics cards and displays available for the PC environment.

Apple solved that issue by only allowing and supporting their own hardware. I like Apple's hardware but it does have its limitations and problems, one of which is significantly higher prices.

An experience Linux guru can get just about anything out of a piece of hardware but a newbie may just throw up his hands and go back to WinXX  

[verdant]

@ fos

I agree with you - it took me hours of online searching and then experimenting to sort out my KMS related display issues (having two HDDs was a real help, when the Linux OSs on the other HDD were displaying blank screens!) on my Linux only PC (AMD Athlon with ATI Radeon 9800 Pro graphics card), where I am running in 32bit mode:

1. Linux Mint Debian Edition (which I am really liking because of its faster speed than Ubuntu 12.04 LTS and Pinguy 12.04 LTS and not needing acpi=force apm=power_off in GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT ext/default/grub, and for good measure, apm power_off=1 in /etc/modules, to force the PC to power down, which Ubuntu 12.04LTS and Pinguy 12.04LTS do).

2. Pinguy OS 12.04 LTS

3. Unbuntu 12.04 LTS ( on a separate second HDD)

To be able set and use display resolutions above 1024x768 up to 1280x1024 with the radeon driver installed, I have had to do the following:

1. Linux Mint Debian Edition
Use radeon.modeset=0 in /ext/default/grub in GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT and place a custom xorg.conf in /etc/X11/xorg.conf, plus set edit /etc/modprobe.d/radeon-kms.conf, to change option radeon.modeset=1 to option radeon.modeset=0

which prevents me from running Cinnamon and being stuck with MATE but at least it allows me to use my LCD display's natural resolution.

2. Pinguy OS 12.04 LTS
Use radeon.modeset=0 in /ext/default/grub in GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT and place a custom xorg.conf in /etc/X11/xorg.conf, plus place a .xprofile file in /home/username containing xrandr newmode,addmode and output lines for 1152x864_60.00 and 1280x1024_60.00, based on my display's cvt x y z output in Terminal.

3. Unbuntu 12.04 LTS ( on a separate second HDD)
Use radeon.modeset=0 in /ext/default/grub in GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT and place a custom xorg.conf in /etc/X11/xorg.conf, plus place a .xprofile file in /home/username containing xrandr newmode,addmode and output lines for 1152x864_60.00 and 1280x1024_60.00, based on my display's cvt x y z output in Terminal.

Don't even get me started on grub2 versus grub legacy when running PCLinuxOS plus the above OSs!

Why does PCLinuxOS not now switch to Grub2 given the recent release of Grub version 2.00?

[dddirtman]

unbuntu for me