Best version of linux

[dave_the_nerd]

Whichever one I happen to be using at the moment.

 

[JM Aggie08]

Arch.

Lol, just kidding don't touch it.

 

[Jodell88]

Arch.

Lol, just kidding don't touch it.

What's wrong with Arch?

 

[JM Aggie08]

What's wrong with Arch?

"Plug & Play"
"User Friendly"

Doesn't necessarily meet OP's criteria IMO.

 

[hasu]

Sorry to wake up an old thread!

Any comments on MATE vs Cinnamon for Linux Mint?
What would one miss on MATE compared to Cinnamon?

 

[lxskllr]

What would one miss on MATE compared to Cinnamon?

GTK3. Mate is the old Gnome2. That was, and remains my favorite GNU/Linux desktop, but alas, time marches on. I have concerns about their long term viability. GTK2 is deprecated, and a small project is gonna have a hard time keeping it maintained long term. I've only played with Cinnamon briefly, but it didn't really suit me.

After Gnome changed, I switched to Xfce. It was always a poor man's Gnome2, and due to the glacial development, it remains so. They're slowly porting to GTK3, but that'll take awhile. I'm in no hurry.

Your best bet is to try them both, and other desktops too. They're all generally the same. It comes down to fit, finish, and features. Features=bloat if you don't use those particular features. Xfce does it for me. It may be too big, too small, or too ugly for you. There's no accounting for taste.

 

[phasseshifter]

i am using mint cinnamon ...updated to Rebecca and added KDE..well i just got a copy of mint Rebecca with KDE as an ISO ..ripped it and find it works well..

 

[Maximilian]

I use linux on my haswell home server and all I require are 4 things from a distro:

- To install and actually start
- To allow for a remote gui with nomachine
- To allow for samba shares
- To do all this without me resorting to punching the screen

And in search of this ive went through quite a few distros recently...

Mint 17.1 - Wonderful distro, the only one that I ever got to work a year ago when I first tried linux, ive been using it since then and its almost perfect, the GUI will lock up on file transfers sometimes, I think its got something to do with the samba shares, I dunno this seems to only happen on ubuntu/debian based stuff, ive seen threads describing it but the issue dosent seem widespread. Anyway this bug is what triggered my search for a new distro.

Mint 17 KDE - Same old mint with KDE instead of cinammon, file transfer bug remains unfortunately

Debian 7.7/8.0 beta2 - I could not get this to install at all, tried making a usb stick several ways (even with linux's own dd command) no joy!

LMDE - The installer is a PITA because it manually wanted me to tell it how to partition things, internet didn't work, when I fixed that (by plugging in a wireless adapter lol) the update manager refused to work

CentOS 7 - No GUI package manager in KDE so good luck installing anything, the other option is gnome3 which is pretty terrible

Fedora 21 - Default DE is gnome3, enough said

Mangei 4 - Dosent support uefi boot, thats okay gave it a shot anyway, seemed to install fine, nice installer, wouldn't start on reboot, some grub error 17. Oh well They say 5 will support uefi boot so maybe itll play nice then

Manjaro - Dosent use debs, dosent use rpms, how do I install anything not in the repos? Who knows.

openSUSE - I tried this a year ago and it made me want to punch things... However once you figure it out (disable the firewall and apparmor) its not bad. It comes with this program called yast for configuring everything, this is openSUSEs unique selling point. This is my choice of distro now, no file transfer bug, good UI, fits all my requirements. The one annoying bug is yast wont start in a remote session (some bug with libqt4) but that's okay because it has a text mode, "sudo yast" and you can do it all from the terminal (easily as well, unlike the typical terminal based program).

Overall I would say the best distros are mint/openSUSE. I pick openSUSE because it works.

 

[Ottertail]

I have been using Crunchbang for awhile now... I like it but it is not as polished as some of the others. It is worth taking a look at.

 

[Jodell88]

Manjaro is based on Arch Linux and uses the package manager pacman.

 

[Maximilian]

I retract my earlier statements about CentOS 7, enabling the extra repository basically fixes all grievances I had with it... and its got two GUI package managers in KDE! Just replaced opensuse with it as suse was behaving strangely with nomachine. CentOS is a bit finnicky on a fresh install if you're a noob but once its working its great, seems pretty solid :thumbsup: Hope it lasts!

 

[replica9000]

I occasionally check out other distros, but I stick with Debian.

 

[ashetos]

Fedora 21 Workstation with Gnome 3.14 is a pretty amazing desktop experience alongside the latest cutting edge linux kernel for device support. It's worth a try. Checkout the fedorafaq site for third-party repositories if you decide to stick with it.

 

[hasu]

Fedora 21 Workstation with Gnome 3.14 is a pretty amazing desktop experience alongside the latest cutting edge linux kernel for device support. It's worth a try. Checkout the fedorafaq site for third-party repositories if you decide to stick with it.

Fedora looks very polished on par with any commercial OS offering. My main concern is that it lacks a useable task bar and minimize button (on windows). Once you minimize a program by going into the caption menu, it is very hard to locate and restore afterwards.

 

[phasseshifter]

i just installed korora21 beta kde..have trouble with it not reconising the network as for anything else time will tell although i think i will sticfk with mint..kde rebecca....

 

[FrankRamiro]

For me for old Hardware 1gb mem or less, Xubuntu is still the best.
any other is a piece of crap

 

[ashetos]

For me for old Hardware 1gb mem or less, Xubuntu is still the best.
any other is a piece of crap

Lubuntu 32-bit (LXDE) is even lighter. For 1GB of memory I would say XFCE is still too heavy. Also, avoid 64-bit at all costs.

 

[ArisVer]

Debian XFCE 32bit, Iceweasel, Terminal, Transmission, File Manager, Task Manager > 159MB of 1009MB used. I don't see a memory problem here.

 

[ashetos]

Debian XFCE 32bit, Iceweasel, Terminal, Transmission, File Manager, Task Manager > 159MB of 1009MB used. I don't see a memory problem here.

That's pretty impressive. My past experience with Xubuntu is completely different.

Is it Debian? Or maybe memory compression? Or aggressive paging in the swapfile?

Anyway, Lubuntu vs Xubuntu is almost 100 Mbytes difference, which is significant.

 

[FrankRamiro]

After all this advising on the best Distro for this dude,everybody including me advised on this and that distro, but no one knows and asked this guy what is his machine specs,this is utmost important for advising on a linux distro? if is Non PAE, or PAE CPU,How much Mem, What motherboard and CPU processor, till he give us this info, is kind shooting in the dark.

 

[FrankRamiro]

Lubuntu 32-bit (LXDE) is even lighter. For 1GB of memory I would say XFCE is still too heavy. Also, avoid 64-bit at all costs.

I never liked LXDE,i tried Lubuntu LXDE,Debian,Mint,and many others that people advise as great distros and i don't like them,too much work to get it running software wise,or too many problems with software compatibility, i like most everything out of the box and Xubuntu fits the bill, i'm used to Xubuntu, and any time i change to other Distro and believe me i tried them all, but go right back to Xubuntu or Ubuntu.
on my low end hardware either Xubuntu 12.04 NON PAE CPU or 14.04 for me are the best compared to other Distros,the only thing you have to do is download from the ubuntu software center Ubuntu restricted Extras, and also install Google Chrome very easy because i don't like Firefox very much.and you are in business.

 

[ArisVer]

That's pretty impressive. My past experience with Xubuntu is completely different.

Is it Debian? Or maybe memory compression? Or aggressive paging in the swapfile?

Anyway, Lubuntu vs Xubuntu is almost 100 Mbytes difference, which is significant.

Debian XFCE normal stock install on an old single core. Not using it much.

 

[FrankRamiro]

I've just installed Mint 17.1 with XFCE Rabeca on a Pemtium 4 and it works Ok,it's almost like Xubuntu 14.04, the only diferences that i find relevant is it comes with ubuntu restricted_extras installed and screensaver,and a few things that you can easy install in Xubunru 14.04,
one thing that i noticed is that when you finish install from the Cd, it sais you have to reboot but it lets you hang in there, i had to press power and reboot, with Xubuntu it does it auto,besides that is similar in speed and config. wise.

 

[FrankRamiro]

I've just installed Mint 17.1 with XFCE Rabeca on a Pemtium 4 and it works Ok,it's almost like Xubuntu 14.04, the only diferences that i find relevant is it comes with ubuntu restricted_extras installed and screensaver,and a few things that you can easy install in Xubunru 14.04,
one thing that i noticed is that when you finish install from the Cd, it sais you have to reboot but it lets you hang in there, i had to press power and reboot, with Xubuntu it does it auto,besides that is similar in speed and config. wise.

Update on Mint rabeca 17.1!

Every time i boot i have this annoying notice quote:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
STARTING Synaptic Packages Manager,without Administrative privileges,

you will not be able to apply any changes , but you can still export the marked changes, export or create a download script for them .
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

[poofyhairguy]

and porting windows apps to linux?

What kinds of apps?

If it is the business desktop/server you need to be on a Redhat product

If it is for the consumer desktop Ubuntu is king.

Linux is not universal. Unless the end result is open source code that the user compiles for their own binary you are going to have to make distro-specific binaries, so you might as well start of the version of Linux that most of your target market uses.