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10 Linux distros to watch in 2014

31 points by MisterLunduke 13y ago

timmillwood 13y ago
Use elementary OS everyday, and love it.
stewbrew 13y ago
Names of some distros. Short descriptions. Some image. No orginal content. Some remarks but no reasoning about why a distro was included in the list. Little surplus value in comparison to the top 10 distros of http://distrowatch.com http://distrowatch.com.
- tenfingers 13y ago
  The best distributions are the distributions which have a large developer base, good tools (bug trackers, QA, etc), are desktop agnostic, and have been alive for several years. The list much has been pretty much the same for more than a decade now: openSuse, fedora, debian, arch, gentoo. Everything else is derivative, where the "added value" is often a default theme and a list of default applications.
  - qznc 13y ago
    I think Mint/Korora add value for the pragmatics, who want Skype, Adobe Reader, etc available on Ubuntu/Fedora.
  - sp332 13y ago
    Debian isn't necessarily better than Linux Mint just because Mint is a "derivative". The reason all these derivatives exist is to focus on a goal the original distro didn't, like a specific desktop.
TallGuyShort 13y ago
Of course for anyone working server-side, Ubuntu 14.04 (the next LTS) and RHEL 7 are going to be the biggest deal of all, I think. I don't see the value in much of this commentary, but I agree the some of the "X server wars" may influence popularity. I switched to openSuSE recently for very related reasons and was happy with the choice - so that prediction may have stock...
nimbs 13y ago
The list: elementary OS Ubuntu Touch openSUSE ChromeOS Lubuntu Mer + Plasma Active Mint Arch SteamOS Roll Your Own - At this point, the tools for building your own Linux distribution are mature and easy.
- tenfingers 13y ago
  And by "roll your own" they actually mean "customize distribution X by choosing the list of packages you want".
username42 13y ago
I think 2014 is the year for fedora. It is the best solution I see to avoid the insane unity and to have a reliable, modern mainstream distribution.
- claystu 13y ago
  I expected to at least see Fedora mentioned. It's still very much alive and well.
- ralphc 13y ago
  What's been a dealbreaker for me is Fedora's behavior as a VM client, both with VirtualBox and VMWare. Sound never works, screen resolution can't be resized, and video just goes away sometimes. It really helps that Ubuntu has VMWare client libs right in the repository.
snird 13y ago
I think what will cause most damage to the ubuntu popularity is the new Unity integration with advertisers, I for one, start using Mint instead, getting the ubuntu environment I'm used to without all the bullshit.
AlexanderDhoore 13y ago
I used to follow linux distros very closely. I tried out new releases all the time, and spent hours (days, weeks) tweaking desktop environments. Now I just use Ubuntu with Unity and Get Stuff Done. I look forward to Ubuntu 14.04. It better be rock solid.
- rdtsc 13y ago
  Same thing with me. Maybe I just got older. Or maybe the novelty wore off. I remember that time fondly. Mandrake Linux, Redhat, Ubuntu wasn't even in sight. Compiling everything in Gentoo. Compiled my own kernels often. Hunted for drivers just to make audio work. I think I enjoyed it because it was a breath of fresh air after being hit in the head by Microsoft repeatedly. I don't dislike Microsoft anymore as much but that is because I have gotten away from using its products (mostly). But at that time, it felt really exciting getting a Linux prompt on a home PC when commercial Unix clones would sell for thousands of dollars. It was like having your own Shuttle in the backyard to play with. Now it just became a nuisance. I want my stuff to work. "Do I have to open the terminal again to configure the network? Argh...". Maybe that is a good sign, Ubuntu got me spoiled. Or again, maybe I just got older and lost interest.
lcedp 13y ago
Nor amazed with the list... Include http://bedrocklinux.org/ http://bedrocklinux.org/ at least.
- matbee 13y ago
  Also voted most fucking ugly.
mistercow 13y ago
I stopped reading this at the Arch entry. It makes the list based on a "hunch", with no elaboration or even speculation? Why should I care about this author's hunch?
VLM 13y ago
Its been interesting to watch journalist distro reviews over the decades. In the olden days it was all about the install. The difference between a good or bad distro was did the installer have a graphical image on boot, or text mode. No journalist commentary on OS features or actual usage, the sole quality of an entire OS was just the installer. According to the journalists no one ever does anything with linux that install it over and over while admiring the installer. Now its all about the window manager, with a small side dish of large corporation gossip. Nothing is ever heard anymore about the beauty of the installer. Something that remains the same is no one ever discusses the OS underneath the window manager. According to the journalists no one actually does anything with linux other than admire weird and counterintuitive desktop managers while occasionally gossiping about how this mega corporation likes alpha blending but that corporation likes multitouch, often without the journalist knowing what it even means. No one ever talks about the professionals who mostly look at how quickly are security issues patched and pushed, whats the upgrade experience look like, how big is the mirror network, how many devs are working on the OS (as a proxy for how many people could we hire...) and most importantly licensing constraints. I admit I was pretty unprofessional in 1996 when I switched everything to Debian just so I could hand a copy of the DFSG to the software license audit goons and tell them to go away, and like a magic incantation, they surprisingly did, and its worked like a magic scroll of protection for me ever since. Here's a copy of my sources.list (now a days a puppet recipe) showing none of the servers I have control over run anything other than main, here's the DFSG, heres a print out of the GPL and BSD and a bunch of other DFSG licenses, and my signature, now go away. Costs the linux admins like 10 minutes annually and $0 while the windows admins end up spending weeks and six figures each time.
- Aardwolf 13y ago
  >> Now its all about the window manager Imho, now it's all about creating as many tiny pages as possible to show as much ads as possible for a tiny article (referring to the "slideshow" that the article is).
- _exec 13y ago
  Why do you consider switching to Debian unprofessional?
kfk 13y ago
Can somebody please tell me what elementary OS is based on? Ubuntu?
- sp332 13y ago
  Yeah, it's Ubuntu. http://elementaryos.org/answers/will-elementary-os-continue-to-be-based-on-ubuntu-1 http://elementaryos.org/answers/will-elementary-os-continue-...
- rrouse 13y ago
  Yes.
user1239321421 13y ago
Would somebody please write a random "X Y of Z" generator already?
matbee 13y ago
Elementary OS is the best. Problem is, it's buggy and would freeze on me atleast 3x a day.

31 points by MisterLunduke 13y ago

Use elementary OS everyday, and love it.

Names of some distros. Short descriptions. Some image. No orginal content. Some remarks but no reasoning about why a distro was included in the list. Little surplus value in comparison to the top 10 distros of http://distrowatch.com http://distrowatch.com.

tenfingers 13y ago
The best distributions are the distributions which have a large developer base, good tools (bug trackers, QA, etc), are desktop agnostic, and have been alive for several years. The list much has been pretty much the same for more than a decade now: openSuse, fedora, debian, arch, gentoo. Everything else is derivative, where the "added value" is often a default theme and a list of default applications.
- qznc 13y ago
  I think Mint/Korora add value for the pragmatics, who want Skype, Adobe Reader, etc available on Ubuntu/Fedora.
- sp332 13y ago
  Debian isn't necessarily better than Linux Mint just because Mint is a "derivative". The reason all these derivatives exist is to focus on a goal the original distro didn't, like a specific desktop.

TallGuyShort 13y ago

Of course for anyone working server-side, Ubuntu 14.04 (the next LTS) and RHEL 7 are going to be the biggest deal of all, I think. I don't see the value in much of this commentary, but I agree the some of the "X server wars" may influence popularity. I switched to openSuSE recently for very related reasons and was happy with the choice - so that prediction may have stock...

nimbs 13y ago

The list: elementary OS Ubuntu Touch openSUSE ChromeOS Lubuntu Mer + Plasma Active Mint Arch SteamOS Roll Your Own - At this point, the tools for building your own Linux distribution are mature and easy.

tenfingers 13y ago
And by "roll your own" they actually mean "customize distribution X by choosing the list of packages you want".

username42 13y ago

I think 2014 is the year for fedora. It is the best solution I see to avoid the insane unity and to have a reliable, modern mainstream distribution.

claystu 13y ago
I expected to at least see Fedora mentioned. It's still very much alive and well.
ralphc 13y ago
What's been a dealbreaker for me is Fedora's behavior as a VM client, both with VirtualBox and VMWare. Sound never works, screen resolution can't be resized, and video just goes away sometimes. It really helps that Ubuntu has VMWare client libs right in the repository.

snird 13y ago

I think what will cause most damage to the ubuntu popularity is the new Unity integration with advertisers, I for one, start using Mint instead, getting the ubuntu environment I'm used to without all the bullshit.

AlexanderDhoore 13y ago

I used to follow linux distros very closely. I tried out new releases all the time, and spent hours (days, weeks) tweaking desktop environments. Now I just use Ubuntu with Unity and Get Stuff Done. I look forward to Ubuntu 14.04. It better be rock solid.

rdtsc 13y ago
Same thing with me. Maybe I just got older. Or maybe the novelty wore off. I remember that time fondly. Mandrake Linux, Redhat, Ubuntu wasn't even in sight. Compiling everything in Gentoo. Compiled my own kernels often. Hunted for drivers just to make audio work. I think I enjoyed it because it was a breath of fresh air after being hit in the head by Microsoft repeatedly. I don't dislike Microsoft anymore as much but that is because I have gotten away from using its products (mostly). But at that time, it felt really exciting getting a Linux prompt on a home PC when commercial Unix clones would sell for thousands of dollars. It was like having your own Shuttle in the backyard to play with. Now it just became a nuisance. I want my stuff to work. "Do I have to open the terminal again to configure the network? Argh...". Maybe that is a good sign, Ubuntu got me spoiled. Or again, maybe I just got older and lost interest.

lcedp 13y ago

Nor amazed with the list... Include http://bedrocklinux.org/ http://bedrocklinux.org/ at least.

matbee 13y ago
Also voted most fucking ugly.

mistercow 13y ago

I stopped reading this at the Arch entry. It makes the list based on a "hunch", with no elaboration or even speculation? Why should I care about this author's hunch?

VLM 13y ago

Its been interesting to watch journalist distro reviews over the decades. In the olden days it was all about the install. The difference between a good or bad distro was did the installer have a graphical image on boot, or text mode. No journalist commentary on OS features or actual usage, the sole quality of an entire OS was just the installer. According to the journalists no one ever does anything with linux that install it over and over while admiring the installer. Now its all about the window manager, with a small side dish of large corporation gossip. Nothing is ever heard anymore about the beauty of the installer. Something that remains the same is no one ever discusses the OS underneath the window manager. According to the journalists no one actually does anything with linux other than admire weird and counterintuitive desktop managers while occasionally gossiping about how this mega corporation likes alpha blending but that corporation likes multitouch, often without the journalist knowing what it even means. No one ever talks about the professionals who mostly look at how quickly are security issues patched and pushed, whats the upgrade experience look like, how big is the mirror network, how many devs are working on the OS (as a proxy for how many people could we hire...) and most importantly licensing constraints. I admit I was pretty unprofessional in 1996 when I switched everything to Debian just so I could hand a copy of the DFSG to the software license audit goons and tell them to go away, and like a magic incantation, they surprisingly did, and its worked like a magic scroll of protection for me ever since. Here's a copy of my sources.list (now a days a puppet recipe) showing none of the servers I have control over run anything other than main, here's the DFSG, heres a print out of the GPL and BSD and a bunch of other DFSG licenses, and my signature, now go away. Costs the linux admins like 10 minutes annually and $0 while the windows admins end up spending weeks and six figures each time.

Aardwolf 13y ago
>> Now its all about the window manager Imho, now it's all about creating as many tiny pages as possible to show as much ads as possible for a tiny article (referring to the "slideshow" that the article is).
_exec 13y ago
Why do you consider switching to Debian unprofessional?

kfk 13y ago

Can somebody please tell me what elementary OS is based on? Ubuntu?

sp332 13y ago
Yeah, it's Ubuntu. http://elementaryos.org/answers/will-elementary-os-continue-to-be-based-on-ubuntu-1 http://elementaryos.org/answers/will-elementary-os-continue-...
rrouse 13y ago
Yes.

user1239321421 13y ago

Would somebody please write a random "X Y of Z" generator already?

matbee 13y ago

Elementary OS is the best. Problem is, it's buggy and would freeze on me atleast 3x a day.