which distro should I try?

[nageov3t]

so, I really need to bone up on my generic linux skills and I was thinking that the best way to do that might just be to install some flavor of linux on my desktop and force myself to use it as my primary operating system, outside of the maybe 2-3 hours that I'm playing WoW on raiding nights... any suggestions on which one to try? I'm running a 64-bit OC'd i7 system with 6 gigs of ram.

 

[Nothinman]

Ubuntu is still the default favorite for most. Boot the LiveCD and see how much of your hardware works out of the box, that'll give you an idea of how much work you have to do to get everything going.

I'm a Debian zealot, which Ubuntu is based off, but the installer is more verbose (which I like) which tends to scare some people.

And actually if you want you can get WoW running under WINE, supposedly it works pretty well.

 

[Sadaiyappan]

Linux mint is the most user friendly Linux distro available. It is based off of Ubuntu. It comes with flash pre-installed and all codecs pre-installed and it trys to get everything working out of the box.

 

[Nothinman]

Linux mint is the most user friendly Linux distro available. It is based off of Ubuntu. It comes with flash pre-installed and all codecs pre-installed and it trys to get everything working out of the box.

Ubuntu tries to get everything working out of the box. Hell, with udev and Xorg being as smart as they are these days no distro should have major problems with drivers.

Ubuntu doesn't include Flash because I don't believe it's legal to redistribute it. They do however have the flashplugin-nonfree package, like Debian, that will download and install it for you. Enabling multiverse and installing that package isn't terribly difficult.

 

[Mem]

Ubuntu tries to get everything working out of the box. Hell, with udev and Xorg being as smart as they are these days no distro should have major problems with drivers.

Ubuntu doesn't include Flash because I don't believe it's legal to redistribute it. They do however have the flashplugin-nonfree package, like Debian, that will download and install it for you. Enabling multiverse and installing that package isn't terribly difficult.

I actually went back to Kubuntu 9.10 from trying out Ubuntu 9.10 ,I know its bascially KDE via Gnome,however I found Kubuntu more snappier in general and looks a lot better(personal preference).

 

[lxskllr]

I'm a Debian zealot, which Ubuntu is based off, but the installer is more verbose (which I like) which tends to scare some people.

What would you say is the biggest advantage of running Debian over Ubuntu? I've been thinking about trying it out. Are there any major disadvantages to Debian?

 

[Colt45]

I <3 debian. When I use someone else's ubuntu, it seems like a broken debian, lol

 

[lxskllr]

I <3 debian. When I use someone else's ubuntu, it seems like a broken debian, lol

How so? What's better about it?

I'm getting a little disenchanted with Ubuntu do to the constant breaking of functionality with each release. I'd like to try something that advances a bit slower perhaps, but always advances.

 

[xSauronx]

How so? What's better about it?

I'm getting a little disenchanted with Ubuntu do to the constant breaking of functionality with each release. I'd like to try something that advances a bit slower perhaps, but always advances.

run Debian sid, even though its listed as experimental or whatever...its probably less likely to be a bitch about such things

note: with new hardware theres a slightly higher chance of the hardware not working, or being a pain in the ass to get working with debian over ubuntu. i ran into a couple problems with an am3 board in debian that ubuntu didnt bat an eye at. but debian is a damn solid distro, and basically youll just have to add a repo or two and spend a little extra time maybe setting up a few things.

 

[jvroig]

What, nobody's saying Fedora or OpenSuSE? :biggrin:

I'm a Fedora user myself, since about 3-4 years ago.

OpenSuSE should be ok if you'd enjoy KDE better...

But in all honesty, whenever someone asks me "Hey, I wanna try linux, what distro would you recommend", I most often respond with "Try Ubuntu... here's a live CD"

 

[Nothinman]

What would you say is the biggest advantage of running Debian over Ubuntu? I've been thinking about trying it out. Are there any major disadvantages to Debian?

I look at it from the opposite perspective, Debian is the original so what's the compelling reasons to run Ubuntu? Debian has no commercial entity responsible for it, it's a totally non-profit organization that's focused more on the freedom of the software than ease of use. Ubuntu tends to push things out into release regardless of whether it's the technically best solution in the hopes of fixing it later on where Debian will wait a bit longer and try to get it right on the first try. Both methods have merit, but Ubuntu's method causes more work for them in the long run and with Debian's sid release I get the best of both worlds.

Sid. I can run a constantly moving and upgrading distro. No need to wait 6mo for the next version and hope they didn't do something to break the upgrade again. And Ubuntu alpha/beta releases are so unstable that it's not worth trying unless you're a developer.

And Mint just gets under my skin. I see the point of what they're trying to do, but I don't see why they're wasting their time doing it they way they are. A full Ubuntu fork just for some themes, codecs, etc? Why not just do a sub-distro like Kubuntu, Edubuntu, etc? And really, is it all that difficult to install those things yourself? No, it's like 5 minutes after Ubuntu installation to get all of the non-free stuff you want.

What, nobody's saying Fedora or OpenSuSE?

Ugh, can't stand either of them.

 

[lxskllr]

I think I'll give Debian a try on my next install. I'm gonna wipe the drive anyway because I'm not happy with the way I have it partitioned. That'll give me a chance to try it without losing anything more than time.

 

[Net]

What would you say is the biggest advantage of running Debian over Ubuntu? I've been thinking about trying it out. Are there any major disadvantages to Debian?

stability. debian does more testing before making a release for updates and versions.

 

[jvroig]

And Mint just gets under my skin. I see the point of what they're trying to do, but I don't see why they're wasting their time doing it they way they are. A full Ubuntu fork just for some themes, codecs, etc? Why not just do a sub-distro like Kubuntu, Edubuntu, etc? And really, is it all that difficult to install those things yourself? No, it's like 5 minutes after Ubuntu installation to get all of the non-free stuff you want.

They can't do a "subdistro" like Kubuntu/Edubuntu because Mint isn't done by Ubuntu developers (Canonical). Mint is some other people's project, not an "official" Canonical Ubuntu derivative.

And yes, for experienced linux users like us, it's a simple matter that takes 5 minutes. That's why Mint is most likely for those who don't want to be bothered to learn those stuff, and just want the complete out-of-the-box experience to be flawless as possible as compared to how easy they saw it in their modern XP install (that probably somebody else even installed for them). Does it matter? To some, yes, and they are probably the people Mint was made for. Certainly, Mint doesn't strike me as an expert Linux user's distro.

 

[Nothinman]

They can't do a "subdistro" like Kubuntu/Edubuntu because Mint isn't done by Ubuntu developers (Canonical). Mint is some other people's project, not an "official" Canonical Ubuntu derivative.

Mythbuntu isn't supported by Canonical either but they found a way to work with them.

And yes, for experienced linux users like us, it's a simple matter that takes 5 minutes. That's why Mint is most likely for those who don't want to be bothered to learn those stuff, and just want the complete out-of-the-box experience to be flawless as possible as compared to how easy they saw it in their modern XP install (that probably somebody else even installed for them). Does it matter? To some, yes, and they are probably the people Mint was made for. Certainly, Mint doesn't strike me as an expert Linux user's distro.

Besides having to enable the restricted drivers (maybe) and install the flash package, what extra work is there? Oh yea, libdvdcss is a bit of a pain since neither Debian or Ubuntu package it so I did have to use the repos at http://www.debian-multimedia.org for that one. But Ubuntu does package VLC which I believe has it's own CSS decrypter in it.

 

[Gamingphreek]

I'm with Nothinman on this, Mint annoys the crap out of me. It is essentially an OS loaded with more bloat - taking the easy way through things instead of learning it first.

The reason nobody is mentioning Fedora or xxxxSuse distros is quite simple.

First and foremost, both (especially Fedora) require a more indepth knowledge of the Linux OS to use.

Second, the package management systems aren't as robust. Yes, I realize that RPM's are some of the most widely distributed packages; however, at least in my experience, the repositories and packages are somewhat clunky in a lot of cases.

Third, Fedora is a very experimental type distro. It operates on the bleeding edge of software releases, and is, essentially, a beta test for Red Hat Enterprise. Anything Red Hat isn't sure about, they jam it into Fedora first and see what the response is like.

Debian based is the best way for anyone to simply start out. If you get comfortable with that, you generally know a good deal of Linux and wont have a problem moving towards Fedora, Suse, or other distros. Just stay away from Gentoo and ArchLinux (Both require an in depth knowledge of Linux) and you should, overall, be fine.

-Kevin

 

[jvroig]

Mint annoys the crap out of me. It is essentially an OS loaded with more bloat - taking the easy way through things instead of learning it first.

That's exactly it: Mint targets those people who don't want to bother learning how to do stuff. Their target is those who just want it running as they expect out of the box. No learning, no tweaking, nothing. Some linux users think this is a good goal, while others scoff at it. I tend to form no strong opinion about it one way or another.

I don't support them myself, as far as Mint is concerned I'm neutral. But I recognize their purpose/goal, and as far as their goal is concerned (making everything they possibly can work out of the box), they seem to be meeting it. If the argument becomes "is that a good goal to begin with? what's wrong with learning a few things first?" then I have no judgement about it. I simply don't care, but some people - those who love Mint - obviously do.

As for Debian being more stable and a better starting place for learning Linux, that may be true. I started with Fedora, and yes, I can remember quite a handful of events where things broke (temporarily or needing a solution from me) and it was quite frustrating. However, since the servers I was going to handle were all in RHEL / CentOS, I had no better desktop distro to try than Fedora.

Regards.

 

[Nothinman]

First and foremost, both (especially Fedora) require a more indepth knowledge of the Linux OS to use.

Second, the package management systems aren't as robust. Yes, I realize that RPM's are some of the most widely distributed packages; however, at least in my experience, the repositories and packages are somewhat clunky in a lot of cases.

I would say the crappy repositories are the first reason. Installing Ubuntu and enabling universe and multiverse gets you the same 25,000+ packages available in Debian. That's hard to beat.

Third, Fedora is a very experimental type distro. It operates on the bleeding edge of software releases, and is, essentially, a beta test for Red Hat Enterprise. Anything Red Hat isn't sure about, they jam it into Fedora first and see what the response is like.

And upgrading between releases ranges from PITA to impossible. From what I hear Ubuntu has had some upgrade problems between some releases but the chances of it working out are still much greater than with Fedora. Being able to an in-place upgrade between Debian releases has always been a release requirement with exceptions being made for only very few circumstances and special configurations.

I don't support them myself, as far as Mint is concerned I'm neutral. But I recognize their purpose/goal, and as far as their goal is concerned (making everything they possibly can work out of the box), they seem to be meeting it. If the argument becomes "is that a good goal to begin with? what's wrong with learning a few things first?" then I have no judgement about it. I simply don't care, but some people - those who love Mint - obviously do.

I have no problems with their goals, just how they're going about meeting them. Ubuntu already has 95&#37; of what they want packaged and that last 5% in no way warrants yet another distro.

 

[xSauronx]

I think I'll give Debian a try on my next install. I'm gonna wipe the drive anyway because I'm not happy with the way I have it partitioned. That'll give me a chance to try it without losing anything more than time.

Logical volumes are your friend. you can use a drive or create a partition for linux and do pretty much everything else with logical drives. configurinig them is pretty straightforward in the installer for debian, and it can even automatically set things up for you and if you, for some reason, want more space on /home later or whatever you can adjust it without really hurting anything.

 

[Nothinman]

Logical volumes are your friend. you can use a drive or create a partition for linux and do pretty much everything else with logical drives. configurinig them is pretty straightforward in the installer for debian, and it can even automatically set things up for you and if you, for some reason, want more space on /home later or whatever you can adjust it without really hurting anything.

Yea, I don't know why Ubuntu doesn't use them by default. It would've saved them form all of the headaches that resulted from the /dev/blah->UUIDs transition that they did.

 

[Jodell88]

I vote for Mandriva.

 

[heat23]

I was in the same boat as you and wanted to learn some Linux a while back. What I did was install Lightbox (and also VMware Server) so I can run Linux within my Windows OS. Yes it did not force me to use it since I was running it from within Windows, but it gave me a chance to play around with it. Eventually, I used my old desktop and installed Linux on there so I can experience it more fully. The distros I tried were Ubuntu and Fedora Core... I would say try Ubuntu first since it is a much smaller ~700mb download and then you can always install another.

In fact, if you are using a VM (virtual machine), go ahead and install both!

 

[d4mo]

I would say Debian.

The first distro I used was Gentoo. Which I still love. I use it on my server at home, but there is a little too much upkeep for a desktop. Although it really taught me the ins and outs of linux.

Ubuntu is ok, but they make everything too easy. At least with Debian you have to think a little.

 

[Satyrist]

Debian: Generally going to be considered to be built for stability above all else-That will come with the downside that most of your software will be more than a few versions behind, except if it's something that is released for reasons of security/stability. Their software repositories are going to be among the largest, you'll likely find what you're looking for. If you're looking for something a little more recent, Debian testing ought to be fine for the most part, one isn't likely to be reducing stability on their machine. It's a little tougher for a novice to set up, but I do believe that resources are out there to assist in setting up a new install.

Ubuntu: Based off of Debian unstable. Many have been unimpressed with the last few releases, as a lot of the things that were working fine with the older version they had been using, breaks or doesn't work quite as well as it used to. They may simply be getting too large, they might have more people than say, a distro like sidux...But many may not be as experienced in linux as others might...And it tends to show when bug reports come in, and either get fixed half-assed, if they're addressed at all. I ended up having to fight with a fresh install far too often, and many things still didn't work properly afterwards.

Ones that I've settled on more recently have been SimplyMepis, (based off of Debian stable, works better on laptops that gave me fits with Ubuntu. Community generally is older, and gets questions answered without issue for the most part) and a lesser-known variant called Pardus. (Independent distro from Turkey, no 64bit..yet, but everything also worked with a laptop that has AMD/Geforce 9100 graphics...Works and looks very nice. Reportedly works nicer with Intel x3100/4500 integrated graphics as well)

Mepis might work better if you're looking to play games, I haven't really tried playing anything under Pardus as of yet.

These days, I can't really find myself recommending Ubuntu for the most part, even for beginners. For a grandma/grandpa box where they're going to be using email/web browsing, something like Debian or Mepis would probably work better. Mandriva is also another one to consider.

 

[Nothinman]

If you're looking for something a little more recent, Debian testing ought to be fine for the most part, one isn't likely to be reducing stability on their machine. It's a little tougher for a novice to set up, but I do believe that resources are out there to assist in setting up a new install.

Or just do a stable install and dist-upgrade to testing. It costs more in bandwidth but isn't difficult.