4 ms·

What's your favorite distro, and why? Nov-2015

11 points by pjbrunet 11y ago

The first distro that I used full-time was Fedora. That was a good experience. Until Fedora started pushing the "mobile" interface so I switched my laptops and desktops to Crunchbang. (My servers are now CentOS, which I don't have any issues with.) Since Crunchhbang is no longer maintained, it's getting more difficult to keep up with Debian. The whole concept of "pinning" sources is a little crazy. There was a point where I wasn't sure if my dist-upgrade was completely botched. I was able to get Jessie, but the UI is starting to degrade. A good friend of mine seems to enjoy Mate + Ubuntu. It seems like a popular OS with a strong community, but I don't really like the idea of Ubuntu using a weird package manager. I'm posting this because I'm at a point where I'm open to suggestions. Will I continue on with Debian and the continuation of Crunchbang aka Bunsen Labs? https://www.bunsenlabs.org/ Or will I jump on the Ubuntu bandwagon? Or is there something else you recommend that I should look at? I'm mostly thinking about my desktop system, because I have a feeling my next laptop will just be a plain Chromebook. FWIW I like to skin my UI so that everything is "thin" and minimal. Also, this is not a high priority, but I would like a distro that supports Flash for "TV" shows. Recently my Hulu stopped working because Flash is deprecated or whatever. I followed several tutorials to fix my Flash support for Hulu and nothing worked. But as it's time to overhaul my system anyway, I'll just wait till I switch operating systems.

rayalez 11y ago
Personally, I'm using Ubuntu with i3wm, and I'm extremely happy with it. It was my first distro, it works well, both on my laptop and on the server, and does everything I want it to do. I don't have any experience with others, so this might not be an opinion you're very interested in, but I thought I'd add my 2 cents.
- pjbrunet 11y ago
  I'll keep i3wm in mind, the screenshots look similar to what I'm using now, pytyle2.
akulbe 11y ago
Ubuntu. Arch. In that order. Ubuntu - getting things done. Arch - satisfying the desire for bleeding edge.
TheSpiceIsLife 11y ago
Linux Mint on three laptops in this house, two running Cinnamon and one running Xfce desktop. Ubuntu package base. Meets my needs, hassle free, good community support.
archimedespi 11y ago
I'm using Xubuntu 15.04 (going to upgrade to 15.10, but holding off for compat testing for a week or two). I've gone through a ton of distros and I've liked this one the best. I ran Arch awhile ago, got tired of things breaking, then switched to, in series, Linux Mint, Kubuntu, Ubuntu, and then finally Xubuntu, which I actually like the look of. I'm considering switching to NixOS with AwesomeWM at some point, but everything's working pretty well for me under Xubuntu right now.
tvm 11y ago
I'm using Mint with Cinnamon on my main laptop. It works reasonably out of the box including rather great multimedia support. I've used Debian for more than fifteen years and I wouldn't go back, at least on desktop. These new distros made me terribly lazy.
mbrock 11y ago
NixOS. I'm not interested in any other distro except Guix, which is similar. I've used Slackware, Red Hat, Gentoo, Arch, Debian, and Ubuntu in the past. NixOS won't botch your dist-upgrades; you can even Ctrl-C any time in the middle to immediately and completely abort, since upgrades are atomic. You can also choose to only download everything and only do the actual upgrade steps at reboot time.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
saywahat 11y ago
Debian sid. Rolling release like arch but doesn't break when you upgrade.
stephenr 11y ago
You should probably specify that you're talking about a distro for Desktop use. I use Debian on a daily basis for servers, but I haven't bothered with a Linux desktop since about 2005.
- pjbrunet 11y ago
  I really did consider that. If this was StackExchange, I would have been more specific, but I didn't want to rule out a great tangent conversation about Linux servers.
auxym 11y ago
Can't say I've had a good experience with ubuntu on a laptop. Very buggy with sleep/wakes. Often wifi and/or sound refuses to work after a wake up. Lately it's refusing to go to sleep at all when on battery but not when plugged in (!). I've had good experience with both Manjaro (Arch-based) and OpenSUSE, though not on a laptop. One thing I have found important is to use a distro which has a good selection of third-party packages. AUR is perhaps to absolute best out there for this, OBS is also pretty good. Honestly, for the pc I'm currently building, I'll be running W10, with a few linux VMs for hobbies. One of the biggest irritants of every single linux distro I've tried is the f'ing screen going to sleep while watching netflix/youtube/web videos of any sort. I've spent many hours googling for a solution to this, apparently it's one of the great technical issues of our era.
- pjbrunet 11y ago
  That's funny about the screensaver. I had the same problem. My solution was to reinstall XScreenSaver and set the timeout to a long period of time. Of course, there's various energy-saving apps that might dim the screen and there's various places where things autostart from a reboot.
crispytx 11y ago
Puppy Linux!
greenokapi 11y ago
I'm on Arch with i3wm. Arch has support for Flash, and despite its rolling-release nature, I've found it to be reasonably stable for a casual desktop user. Arch and i3wm probably also fit your methodology with regards to being "thin", "bare bones", and minimal. You may want to try Arch out, even if you don't end up using i3wm.
- veddox 11y ago
  i3 is a brilliant DE for hacking, but I found it rather wanting for "normal" use, so I went back to Unity on Ubuntu.
brudgers 11y ago
I've been using Linux as my main OS for about two years. I wound up biting the bullet last April, going with standard Ubuntu, and learning the Unity interface. It's actually pretty good...but I have migrated to Xmonad. The pain of working around a few missing utilities in exchange for tiling windows. Love me some tiling windows. Anyway, AskUbuntu on StackExchange is the killer feature for me. Beats a wiki or a forum all day everyday. Good luck.
mkaziz 11y ago
No love for Elementary OS? It's based on Ubuntu so you'll get to use most of the Ubuntu-related assistance on the internet, and it's well near as pretty as you can get with Linux!
dman 11y ago
debian with dwm.
15DCFA8F 11y ago
I was used to run Arch Linux, living on the bleeding edge and on the constant moving and packages churning that a rolling release distro provides. For some months now, I am using Debian Stable on my desktops, and the experience is being very interesting. I don't use any apt pining, and just some packages from jessie-backports (eg: LibreOffice and Intel Video Driver), besides the official stable repos. This distro is SOLID. My desktop runs very fine, and using a stable distribution means that it will keep running fine for months (years?), instead of that constant discomfort that a rolling release creates as your machine stability and usage potentially changes each day. Of course, things start to stay a little old, but in the end of the day, it doesn't matter for the vast majority of packages. And you can always compile and install on /usr/local some applications that you need more recent versions.
veddox 11y ago
Currently running Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. It has served me well, but I am planning to migrate to elementaryOS later this week. (I want to try something new, and I love the beautiful design of eOS.) I've tried out Arch on an old laptop, and while I really like the total control you have over your (bleeding-edge) system, I find it would require too much admin work to use on my main computer.

11 points by pjbrunet 11y ago

rayalez 11y ago

Personally, I'm using Ubuntu with i3wm, and I'm extremely happy with it. It was my first distro, it works well, both on my laptop and on the server, and does everything I want it to do. I don't have any experience with others, so this might not be an opinion you're very interested in, but I thought I'd add my 2 cents.

pjbrunet 11y ago
I'll keep i3wm in mind, the screenshots look similar to what I'm using now, pytyle2.

akulbe 11y ago

Ubuntu. Arch. In that order. Ubuntu - getting things done. Arch - satisfying the desire for bleeding edge.

TheSpiceIsLife 11y ago

Linux Mint on three laptops in this house, two running Cinnamon and one running Xfce desktop. Ubuntu package base. Meets my needs, hassle free, good community support.

archimedespi 11y ago

I'm using Xubuntu 15.04 (going to upgrade to 15.10, but holding off for compat testing for a week or two). I've gone through a ton of distros and I've liked this one the best. I ran Arch awhile ago, got tired of things breaking, then switched to, in series, Linux Mint, Kubuntu, Ubuntu, and then finally Xubuntu, which I actually like the look of. I'm considering switching to NixOS with AwesomeWM at some point, but everything's working pretty well for me under Xubuntu right now.

tvm 11y ago

I'm using Mint with Cinnamon on my main laptop. It works reasonably out of the box including rather great multimedia support. I've used Debian for more than fifteen years and I wouldn't go back, at least on desktop. These new distros made me terribly lazy.

mbrock 11y ago

NixOS. I'm not interested in any other distro except Guix, which is similar. I've used Slackware, Red Hat, Gentoo, Arch, Debian, and Ubuntu in the past. NixOS won't botch your dist-upgrades; you can even Ctrl-C any time in the middle to immediately and completely abort, since upgrades are atomic. You can also choose to only download everything and only do the actual upgrade steps at reboot time.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

saywahat 11y ago

Debian sid. Rolling release like arch but doesn't break when you upgrade.

stephenr 11y ago

You should probably specify that you're talking about a distro for Desktop use. I use Debian on a daily basis for servers, but I haven't bothered with a Linux desktop since about 2005.

pjbrunet 11y ago
I really did consider that. If this was StackExchange, I would have been more specific, but I didn't want to rule out a great tangent conversation about Linux servers.

auxym 11y ago

Can't say I've had a good experience with ubuntu on a laptop. Very buggy with sleep/wakes. Often wifi and/or sound refuses to work after a wake up. Lately it's refusing to go to sleep at all when on battery but not when plugged in (!). I've had good experience with both Manjaro (Arch-based) and OpenSUSE, though not on a laptop. One thing I have found important is to use a distro which has a good selection of third-party packages. AUR is perhaps to absolute best out there for this, OBS is also pretty good. Honestly, for the pc I'm currently building, I'll be running W10, with a few linux VMs for hobbies. One of the biggest irritants of every single linux distro I've tried is the f'ing screen going to sleep while watching netflix/youtube/web videos of any sort. I've spent many hours googling for a solution to this, apparently it's one of the great technical issues of our era.

pjbrunet 11y ago
That's funny about the screensaver. I had the same problem. My solution was to reinstall XScreenSaver and set the timeout to a long period of time. Of course, there's various energy-saving apps that might dim the screen and there's various places where things autostart from a reboot.

crispytx 11y ago

Puppy Linux!

greenokapi 11y ago

I'm on Arch with i3wm. Arch has support for Flash, and despite its rolling-release nature, I've found it to be reasonably stable for a casual desktop user. Arch and i3wm probably also fit your methodology with regards to being "thin", "bare bones", and minimal. You may want to try Arch out, even if you don't end up using i3wm.

veddox 11y ago
i3 is a brilliant DE for hacking, but I found it rather wanting for "normal" use, so I went back to Unity on Ubuntu.

brudgers 11y ago

I've been using Linux as my main OS for about two years. I wound up biting the bullet last April, going with standard Ubuntu, and learning the Unity interface. It's actually pretty good...but I have migrated to Xmonad. The pain of working around a few missing utilities in exchange for tiling windows. Love me some tiling windows. Anyway, AskUbuntu on StackExchange is the killer feature for me. Beats a wiki or a forum all day everyday. Good luck.

mkaziz 11y ago

No love for Elementary OS? It's based on Ubuntu so you'll get to use most of the Ubuntu-related assistance on the internet, and it's well near as pretty as you can get with Linux!

dman 11y ago

debian with dwm.

15DCFA8F 11y ago

I was used to run Arch Linux, living on the bleeding edge and on the constant moving and packages churning that a rolling release distro provides. For some months now, I am using Debian Stable on my desktops, and the experience is being very interesting. I don't use any apt pining, and just some packages from jessie-backports (eg: LibreOffice and Intel Video Driver), besides the official stable repos. This distro is SOLID. My desktop runs very fine, and using a stable distribution means that it will keep running fine for months (years?), instead of that constant discomfort that a rolling release creates as your machine stability and usage potentially changes each day. Of course, things start to stay a little old, but in the end of the day, it doesn't matter for the vast majority of packages. And you can always compile and install on /usr/local some applications that you need more recent versions.

veddox 11y ago

Currently running Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. It has served me well, but I am planning to migrate to elementaryOS later this week. (I want to try something new, and I love the beautiful design of eOS.) I've tried out Arch on an old laptop, and while I really like the total control you have over your (bleeding-edge) system, I find it would require too much admin work to use on my main computer.