3 ms·

What distro would you recommend take the place of Ubuntu, as a recommended for newbs distro? I mean a distro that you would feel comfortable recommending to a

by antidoh 14y ago

What distro would you recommend take the place of Ubuntu, as a recommended for newbs distro? I mean a distro that you would feel comfortable recommending to a stranger that you will not be able to help install or support the distro, as well as the more traditional "lemme help you with that." As a subset of that, what apt based distro would you recommend for that niche? Is plain Debian really something that people feel comfortable recommending to non-supported strangers? Something that you would not be embarrassed about if they looked you up and told you what happened?

willvarfar 14y ago
I recommend Xubuntu. And if they run Windows, install it as WUBI.
- antidoh 14y ago
  I mean something not derived from Ubuntu. Yes, Xubuntu (which I currently run underneath XMonad) does not (yet) have this and future related features, and that's good. But by using an Ubuntu derived distro, you lend credibility to Ubuntu and Canonical. I would prefer to recommend something higher up the derivation line between Debian and Ubuntu.
  - dagw 14y ago
    Linux Mint as a Debian based version of their distro, which comes with all the desktop polish of Mint, but in their own words: "it's not as stable. Things are likely to break more often but fixes can also come quicker. For this reason, LMDE requires a deeper knowledge and experience with Linux, dpkg and APT" Personally I'd take a look at OpenSuSE. It was a pretty good as a Just Works desktop last I looked, but that was a few years ago. Another option is actually PC-BSD. I've never quite gotten along with it, but that is mainly because I want to do all kinds of hacky strangeness, but for a newbie desktop it's solid with great documentation and easy to install software.
    - antidoh 14y ago
      "Linux Mint as a Debian based version of their distro," Didn't realize that, I'd always seen it as Ubuntu-derived. Thanks.
Surio 14y ago
I hope that my reading of your question as a rhetorical one than a literal one is correct? Because your entire comment is one big reason I have been rooting for Canonical from day one. I have been on Linux on and off since slackware 1.0, Redhat 5 (5.0 (Hurricane)/5.1 (Manhattan)) all the way to SuSE 7.0 and not one time was I able to get someone (anyone) to adopt it completely -- despite all my handholding and regular support! Finally resorted to recommending Cygwin as an alternative, and I was still called upon to help with "things" ;-) The first/only time I managed to get a successful switch and retain, was when I recommended Ubuntu.
- antidoh 14y ago
  I meant it literally.
ps258 14y ago
Fedora is good enough although it's a bit more bleeding edge.

by antidoh 14y ago

willvarfar 14y ago

I recommend Xubuntu. And if they run Windows, install it as WUBI.

antidoh 14y ago
I mean something not derived from Ubuntu. Yes, Xubuntu (which I currently run underneath XMonad) does not (yet) have this and future related features, and that's good. But by using an Ubuntu derived distro, you lend credibility to Ubuntu and Canonical. I would prefer to recommend something higher up the derivation line between Debian and Ubuntu.
- dagw 14y ago
  Linux Mint as a Debian based version of their distro, which comes with all the desktop polish of Mint, but in their own words: "it's not as stable. Things are likely to break more often but fixes can also come quicker. For this reason, LMDE requires a deeper knowledge and experience with Linux, dpkg and APT" Personally I'd take a look at OpenSuSE. It was a pretty good as a Just Works desktop last I looked, but that was a few years ago. Another option is actually PC-BSD. I've never quite gotten along with it, but that is mainly because I want to do all kinds of hacky strangeness, but for a newbie desktop it's solid with great documentation and easy to install software.
  - antidoh 14y ago
    "Linux Mint as a Debian based version of their distro," Didn't realize that, I'd always seen it as Ubuntu-derived. Thanks.

Surio 14y ago

I hope that my reading of your question as a rhetorical one than a literal one is correct? Because your entire comment is one big reason I have been rooting for Canonical from day one. I have been on Linux on and off since slackware 1.0, Redhat 5 (5.0 (Hurricane)/5.1 (Manhattan)) all the way to SuSE 7.0 and not one time was I able to get someone (anyone) to adopt it completely -- despite all my handholding and regular support! Finally resorted to recommending Cygwin as an alternative, and I was still called upon to help with "things" ;-) The first/only time I managed to get a successful switch and retain, was when I recommended Ubuntu.

antidoh 14y ago
I meant it literally.

ps258 14y ago

Fedora is good enough although it's a bit more bleeding edge.