Linux users, what is your favorite distro?

[HawkeyePierce 115]

I currently run Ubuntu 14.04, but I don't like where they are taking the UI design and am thinking of switching.

 

What distro do you use? What do you like about it? What do you not like about it?

[Technous285 40]

I'm a sucker for the old-school Mandrake-Linux/Mandriva-Linux, Dad currently uses Zorin-OS which is a much more user-friendly alternative to Ubunutu (even if it is based on Ubuntu at the core, like SteamOS). I've also dabbled with SteamOS on my TinkerRig (it was previously known as SteamRig) which isn't too bad for being based upon Ubuntu.

[HawkeyePierce 115]

 

 

I'm a sucker for the old-school Mandrake-Linux/Mandriva-Linux

 

What do you like about Mandrake and Mandriva?

[\/ 651]

Ubuntu turned Windows 8 on us. Ugh. Cinnamon is fine. Let the spices be spices, and love them all the same.

[Celtore 2,770]

My favourite is arch because you build it from the ground up and if something's wrong, it's probably my fault and I can fix it. That being said, I still wander between distros because I love testing different versions of linux and seeing what these different distros have to offer. One other great distro I've come across is surprisingly opensuse. The settings manager in that distro is fantastic! Plus they are known for being one of the best KDE-based distributions out there.

[HawkeyePierce 115]

That's an interesting point about Debian that I hadn't considered before. Also, Arch looked really interesting and is at the top of my distro contendor list. Never tried it, but I'm setting up a VM to experiment. Any gotchas to look out for or general advice? It certainly seems like a different beast than the others.

[Jora 164]

my favorite is BackTracker5 best one out there

[Jon C 229]

Fedora. It used to be Debian but then I got tired of having tonnes of outdated software (the flipside is that it's extremely stable and thoroughly tested which makes it good for servers). Fedora is pretty stable while being up-to-date and it's great for devel. The default repo only has free software (which you might see as a good or a  bad thing) but adding RPM fusion is trivial, and yum itself is a really nice package manager.

Edited March 27, 2015 by Le Trashman

[Celtore 2,770]

That's an interesting point about Debian that I hadn't considered before. Also, Arch looked really interesting and is at the top of my distro contendor list. Never tried it, but I'm setting up a VM to experiment. Any gotchas to look out for or general advice? It certainly seems like a different beast than the others.

 

Well, yes. If you take up arch, prepare for many frustrating install attempts and learning experiences as well. It doesn't provide you a pretty installer, you kind of have to piece it all together. There's a beginners guide that helps step you through the install process, but you still have a console window after the install is finished. There used to be a much better install guide which helped set up a desktop interface too, but they took it down for some stupid reason.

 

I'd instead suggest maybe starting with manjaro. It's based on arch, but it provides you with a full desktop. I'm actually eagerly awaiting for their KDE release to give a spin

[Technous285 40]

What do you like about Mandrake and Mandriva?

When I first used Mandrake (now Mandriva), it was around the change from XP to Vista, and I preferred the clean "old" style of Win9X/Win2000 over the uber-fancy-shmancy "Let's make everything look pretty and abuse the poor older GPU's when you just have the plain desktop open!" design.

 

Using Win7 I can make a half-arsed reproduction of the "Windows Classic" style that was Win9X/2000 (XP was Luna, Aero is Vista/7), but it's no substitute to the way WinXP did it.

When it comes to Win7 though, I all-bar rip out Aero at the roots to get something I can stand even when running the beastly hardware I have. When it comes to KDE 3.5 Vs. KDE 4+ Vs. Gnome, give me KDE 3.5 ANY day of the century!

Edited March 27, 2015 by Technous285

[HawkeyePierce 115]

 

 

It doesn't provide you a pretty installer

 

Ha, I've always avoided the Software Center installer anyway. I prefer the victory of untangling package dependencies and raging at why it still isn't working, because I'm apparently a masochist.

 

But seriously, I'd never heard of Manjaro and that seems really interesting. Looks like I'll just need to make another VM to try it out! Shucks.

 

Thanks to everyone for the feedback! Time to test drive a few of these.

[Flutter's lover <3 8,205]

I'm currently running Linux Mint/Cinnamon on my netbook. Originally it came with Windows 7 Starter, which sucks feature wise and for what it was, it's a memory hog.  So I switched to Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat) but not much ran on it, so then I went to Cinnamon/Mint and have loved it since..Easy to work with and minimum system requirements...and was easy to install via USB...Since my netbook has no CD Drive.

 

Mint also has huge app support,I've installed Chromium, Red Wine and a few other programs. feels like Windows but isn't.

[ArDee 100]

LXLE, used to use Ubuntu but it was far too bloated down with fancy graphical features. LXLE is nice and fast, and doesn't completely fail at gaming like Ubuntu does. The UI is also a lot more trimmed and Windows-like so it doesn't require learning a completely new workflow to use.

Edited March 27, 2015 by RCTM

[Thorn O Discord 118]

I'm always looking for new distros, so this post really pleases me.  I didn't even know there were other linux bronies around.

 

Anyway, I found a really fat distro, (4gb for the OS alone), but I really like it. I

t's called Ultimate Edition, and It come with a plethora of interchangeable desktop environment. (Say, you get board of Razor, boot up Arch, or whatever else I got). Ultimate edition also comes with TONS of preinstalled programs so you don't have to go out and get them yourself. It runs just fine on any sufficient computer, and comes with a smooth installer from it's site. I got it to run alongside a windows 7 OS on a 2 TB drive, (Windows for gaming, Linux for using). If you like being able to customize EVERYTHING, than Ultimate Edition gives you it all. (Plus no programming needed to swap Desktop Environments, yay)

 

The downsides are shockingly few, actually.

It is the biggest distro I've ever found, and thus could be unsuitable for the average computer. With each desktop, you are given a blank slate, but It really is square one. You gotta learn the ins and outs of every new desktop Environment you test, which can be intensive. (I prefer Razor, but I've only scratched the surface.) 

 

 

I put a lightweight Ubuntu on my old Netbook , and It's running like a champ right now, considering it's previous condition (It ran Windows XP on 2gb of , poor thing). Not much to say there, pretty basic.

[Knight Hadron 372]

I've been running arch, manjaro, ubuntu, red hat (yuck), fedora (yuck again), and a couple other smaller distros since I found linux 5+ years ago. By far, arch wins in terms of customizability, non-user-friendliness, and ease of use. Manjaro is basically arch that is pre-built; for arch, you have to make your system from scratch -- for the most part. Linux From Scratch is really from scratch. Ubuntu is way too graphical for my old computers; I had to disable almost all UI effects and still the dock was buggy, and just in general, to me, Ubuntu is too buggy. I dislike its UI. It's like Windows 8 turned Linux. Red Hat and Fedora were my first forays into linux, and I generally regard fedora as a run-of-the-mill standard linux distro that really doesn't stand out from the rest. Arch, however, stands out. As I said earlier, you build it from scratch, so you know what's on it, and it is not aimed for user-friendliness. That makes it big on my list, because then I don't have to fidget around with control panels and buttons and 3d graphics not working stuff. I have ultimate control on the command line, and while I wouldn't call myself a CLI wizard just yet, I still see the CLI as beautiful.

 

In conclusion of my long blabble, Arch is best because it doesn't have bloat or bad UI built in. And, the update/package manager is easy to use, unlike rpm or apt-get. Although, pacman does not make cow jokes like apt. SUPER COW POWERS.

[A Black Circle 1,586]

Yay, linux!

 

Using 14.04, but (probably) switching to Kororo soon.

[YoshiFanGM 48]

Not sure about which one is my favorite distro, but I have Xubuntu 14.04 on my PC and is currently my main OS. Although I've installed Debian Testing a couple hours ago and I'm using it right now. It's pretty fast and more stable than Ubuntu, so maybe I'm going to switch OS again, hmm.

Edited April 10, 2015 by Derpy-Fan GM

[Tom Snyder 4,112]

What's a distro? I'm confused... 

[YoshiFanGM 48]

What's a distro? I'm confused... 

 

In short: A Linux distro (short of "distribution") is any operating system that uses the Linux Kernel as a base. Some examples include: Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu (which is a derivate of Debian), Arch, Manjaro, among others.

[Celtore 2,770]

What's a distro? I'm confused... 

 

A distro is a collection of software based around the Linux kernel. The thing about Linux is that on its own, it's just a kernel. The kernel is the core of an operating system which deals with the physical hardware, managing memory securely, and other low-level tasks. It doesn't even have a command line, that's still something else (GNU) built on top of it.

 

Distributions take that core and add software on top of it to turn it into a full fledged operating system for specific audiences. Some target general users, others target people at a specific company, others are for servers and some are for scientific research. Distributions can appear radically different from one another, but they're all typically built using the same base (Linux, GNU and oftentimes x-windows for graphics) and they just include different software for a tailored user experience.

[Azure Envy 1,092]

I used Slackware/Red Hat/Mandrake before... way back when.

 

I've got openSUSE on a laptop these days. Seems nice enough.

[Omega Centauri 316]

I currently have Manjaro on my laptop, and I like it well enough. It looks good, it came pre-loaded with steam, it's based on Arch Linux, but it sets alot of it up for you, making it more noob friendly.

 

 

My favourite is arch because you build it from the ground up and if something's wrong, it's probably my fault and I can fix it. That being said, I still wander between distros because I love testing different versions of linux and seeing what these different distros have to offer. One other great distro I've come across is surprisingly opensuse. The settings manager in that distro is fantastic! Plus they are known for being one of the best KDE-based distributions out there.

 

I would use Arch, I just don't think I'd be tech savvy enough to set it all up.

Edited April 12, 2015 by Omega Centauri

[Raini Skies 78]

Arch, Arch, Arch, and Arch. Arch all the way. Its package manager is absolutely amazing. I haven't came across any other quite as powerful as it. Of course, I love seeing what other distros have to offer. I used to be a big fan of Crunchbang, but, of course, that died. openSUSE is what I'd recommend to anyone not willing to run 'pacman -Syu' biweekly.

[Blaze Bronson 343]

I am dual booting Win 8.1 and Ubuntu 14.04.

 

I'm basically just testing linux, but I don't see the benefit. Yeah it's snappy, and different distros might offer customized user experiences.

However, 95% of the time when I'm on my computer, I'm running a program, the OS just lies in the background keeping it up.

And when it comes to programs, linux severely lacks. And the few that work seems to have additional bugs and glitches compared to the windows version.

[long gone 8,929]

I use Windows as my main OS, but I'm partial to Linux Mint. It's like a version of Ubuntu that doesn't suck.