5 ms·

Linux Distributions that deserve more Love

41 points by testrun 13y ago

facorreia 13y ago
Interesting. For my taste, I prefer Linux Mint Cinnamon.
- _sabe_ 13y ago
  Hey man, you were pretty fast trying out all those distros already!
  - facorreia 13y ago
    No thanks. Life is too short for that. But here it goes anyway. Rosa: modified in Russia. I don't even want to know what shady things are going on in this distro. Korora: Fedora-based. Not for me. Chakra: KDE. Nope. Ubuntu Gnome: could be my second choice. But Ubuntu lost me, at least for the time being. Sabayon: Gentoo. Nope.
    - SirSkidmore 13y ago
      Just because it's modified in Russian makes it shady? That seems a little ridiculous.
cliveowen 13y ago
Deserve, not deserves.
- testrun 13y ago
  noted
kfk 13y ago
From the article: if I want to use Arch Linux without banging my head with the terminal, I should be able to do that Look, I got burned by Arch a couple of times and I finally dropped it after 2 years after some crazy nuts updates that broke my system even following the news section. HOWEVER, everybody does what they want, that's the point of linux and linux distros. You can't think like that, you simply can't. If a distro wants you to do crazy updates, you either do it or you go find another distro. The only thing I can say in your favor is that if somebody makes a derivative for simple folks like us, say Chakra, then it's mother distro community should not ditch on them, it's linux after all.
- jlgaddis 13y ago
  Knowing little about Arch Linux, I dismissed it entirely, even though a good sysadmin friend uses it exclusively on his laptop. In my personal life, I first installed Slackware in 1995 but had converted to Debian by 1997 and I've used that almost exclusively until the last two years or so (I have one RHEL6 and one FreeBSD server). I have, of course, used RHEL and Ubuntu previously in my professional life. About six months ago, I installed Arch Linux on a new Thinkpad W530. I didn't intend to really use it, I just wanted to see what the fuss was about. It's stuck around and I'm still running it and I haven't had the first problem with it. I'm not gonna be converting everything over to it, obviously, but it works for me on this laptop (which I do almost 100% of my work on). YMMV but IWFM.
  - clarkm 13y ago
    Well, I hope you're subscribed to the announce mailing list then. Because breaking changes that require manual intervention do occur, and if you don't deal with them in a timely manner you'll be SOL. Waiting until the last minute to port all my init scripts to systemd was definitely not a good idea.
    - chadwickthebold 13y ago
      Yeah, Arch is a great distro for some specific use cases. I loved it when I was in college and had 3+ hours every other week to get my packages un-borked after some update, but nowadays I just don't have the time... Great distro for bleeding edge stuff, though!
    - nly 13y ago
      They do occur but they're rare. I remember the move from sysvinit to systemd taking about 10 minutes, and I have a 3 year old Arch install that has never outright broken on me after an update. Frankly I remember going through more pain every 6 months from in early Ubuntu days (although that's a lot better now also).
- drdaeman 13y ago
  Filesystem snapshots should make any upgrades almost painless. If it failed, roll back to a pre-update snapshot and in the meanwhile inspect changes from a post-upgrade version (branch) of the filesystem. Maybe even run this version in a VM. Sad things are: 1) almost no FS supports writeable snapshots and LVM snapshotting is far from being convenient; 2) you have to setup everything by hand.
theboywho 13y ago
Linux doesn't need more Linux Distributions, Linux needs new Desktop Environments.
- DanBC 13y ago
  What is missing from the available DEs?
  - odonnellryan 13y ago
    I would say nothing, but they can be refined. This might get me hate, but the thing with using Windows for work and Linux for my personal projects: the GUI feels much more "refined" for Windows, even though that can be highly subjective...
    - mavhc 13y ago
      They just need the second 80% of work doing to them
  - wanda 13y ago
    Nothing. It's what needs to be removed that's the problem. I basically never use a DE because xmonad is all I need, and if it needs to be customised, it's not limited at all.
    - dllthomas 13y ago
      Similar, but ratpoison for me.
      - wanda 13y ago
        I used to use dwm and I remember looking at ratpoison and wanting to use it, but I was learning Haskell at the time so I chose xmonad. and likewise when I'll care to learn Lua I'll move onto awesome-wm. Which will probably never happen.
fit2rule 13y ago
I'm intrigued enough by the Timeline view of ROSA that I'm downloading it now and preparing to boot it on the linuxhack machine I've got just for the purpose .. this is something I've wanted in a Desktop GUI for decades, and I'm quite interested in the implementation in ROSA - anyone used it yet, got an opinion based on experience? For me, a Temporal interface to the work I've done on the computer is the One thing missing from modern computer use interfaces. I've always thought that the primary index key for all data created on the computer should be date/time, and better tools for querying/navigating on that index should be developed for users .. but it seems there is some work to be done on making this interface mechanic sensible to the average user. It'd sure be beneficial to me anyway - I'm often thinking "what is that file I made last week .. name forgotten, but I remember when it was, roughly .." while looking for things - if a Time-weighted interface were oriented towards usability, it would be quite useful, imho.
- icebraining 13y ago
  Gnome is exploring the same space with Zeitgeist[1] and the Activity Journal, which are based on the same technology as ROSA's Timeline (Nepomuk). [1] http://zeitgeist-project.com/experience/ http://zeitgeist-project.com/experience/
  - fit2rule 13y ago
    Thanks for the tip -I'll check it out, and now that I know its nepomuk behind the ROSA Timeline thingy, I can investigate things further without much fuss .. appreciate the tip!
xfalcox 13y ago
I'm using Gnome Ubuntu at work, and its a great experience, even on my multi monitor setup.
keithpeter 13y ago
One comment on OA asks why fully free distros left out; Trisquel, Parabola and I'd add gNewSense 3.0. Unless of course the OA thinks these get enough love already!
wanda 13y ago
Sad that Bedrock Linux is not on that list. Also, why bother with Sabayon over Gentoo? If configuring gentoo is too time-consuming just stick to arch or ubuntu/ubuntu derivative.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- supergauntlet 13y ago
  Source-based distro where you can use binary packages unless you need to build from source? Sounds good to me.
  - ParadigmComplex 13y ago
    I'm not sure I'd describe Bedrock Linux quite like that. Rather, the idea is that you can install packages from just about any other distribution, including things which are typically seen as mutually exclusive. The majority of the system can be comprised of packages from something known to be stable like Debian or CentOS, while still having easy access to things like packages from Arch (including Arch's AUR), retain extremely good library compatibility with popular Ubuntu for precompiled non-distro-provided things like proprietary software, and still get to leverage the flexibility tools like Gentoo's portage provides. So, yes, you could use binary packages unless you need to build from source - Bedrock Linux can fit that design if you want it to work that way. That's a perfectly fine way to use it. But I would frame that as one of a number of ways to go about things, as the system is quite flexible.
    - supergauntlet 13y ago
      I was referring to Sabayon but sure.
      - ParadigmComplex 13y ago
        Ah, I misunderstood and feel silly. My apologies.
gaius 13y ago
2 Red Hats, a Debian, an Arch and a Gentoo.
ollybee 13y ago
One of the most important things I look for in a Linux distribution or any software project I may rely on for a long time is it's organisational structure. Is there a committee, Benevolent Dictator for Life, sponsoring company etc. It's not exciting stuff but any project wanting people to spend time and effort on it should make sure they have thought about that stuff and let people know what to expect. It would be nice if short reviews like this made some mention of that aspect of the different distributions.
staticelf 13y ago
I am surprised that no one has mentioned Elementary OS in the comments yet.
- jbeja 13y ago
  I did!.
dlsym 13y ago
Manjaro (http://manjaro.org/ http://manjaro.org/) works great for me. Arch linux without much pain and with XFCE.
- nly 13y ago
  Looks cool. Does it have access to the Arch repos, or is it actually a full fork?
  - dlsym 13y ago
    It has full access to all arch repos including aur. Edit: I guess you can think of it like "arch with an installer and configured desktop environment".
jbeja 13y ago
They i have nice Logos.
TacticalCoder 13y ago
As a very long time Linux user distributions which I find intriguing are the ones using the "Nix" package manager. Nix describes itself as a "purely functional" package manager. As I understand it you don't need to have admin rights to install package (something I always found very, very odd since 20 years or so with both .rpm and .deb based distros: why the heck do I need to be admin to install packages that basically only one user is ever going to use?). With Nix you can also install simultaneously several version of the same package (even for a single user if I understand it correctly). I really wish something like that would one day "catch up" in the Linux world and see what gives. By the way this is in no way a harsh criticism of Debian or anything: I'm a "20-years long" Linux desktop user and a "Debian die-hard" fan :) But I find the concept behind Nix really intriguing and apparently there are regular releases.
- rlpb 13y ago
  > why the heck do I need to be admin to install packages This is being solved in mainstream distributions by adding another layer of abstraction, instead of trying to do within "traditional" userspace. We're rapidly moving towards a multi-VM model (be it full virtualisation or LXC) where all users "have root" inside their own containers. Not being able to install the packages you want isn't an issue when you can quickly and easily create a VM or container and do it in there, all within your existing userspace privileges on the host system. It's no longer about who has root on a particular machine. It's now just a distinction between who manages a system and who uses that system. If you want to manage a system instead of just using it, you can achieve that by having your own entire system by spawning a container or VM, rather than just being limited to your home directory. The cost in disk space is negligible in today's terms. The cost of memory in a VM is still significant, but LXC eliminates that issue.
jbeja 13y ago
I am using Elementary Os Luna, the best at the moment. No crashes, pleasant to see and boots and runs pretty fast.
Joister 13y ago
I want to throw [1]Crunchbang into the mix. I use it for all my dev VMs. [1]http://crunchbang.org/ http://crunchbang.org/
drdaeman 13y ago
Is there anything innovative or just fun in those? For example, Gobolinux (now dead) tried to restructure the filesystem. NixOS (pretty obscure) tries to innovate with package management. Vyatta (dead, don't miss this one) tried to bring Cisco-like look-and-feel CLI for GNU/Linux based routing. And so on. What's fancy in those mentioned distros - I mean, except for the packages they have installed and/or pre-configured by default?
- reikonomusha 13y ago
  A long, long time ago when I was learning C++, I remember the Gobolinux folks were always happy to make new packages ("recipes" as they were called) for me and add them to the repo. In particular, I remember them kindly adding Code::Blocks. The people behind it were truly generous with their time, and Gobo had, in my opinion, absolutely outstanding ideas. I do wish it took off.
snarfff 13y ago
It's nice to see Sabayon mentioned. I've been using it at work for a few years now. I'd used Gentoo for a long time at home previously, and wanted something at work that felt like it, but didn't have time for the tedious installation process, nor the long builds if I suddenly needed to pull in a large number of packages for other purposes. These are the very issues Sabayon purported to address with an out-of-the-box setup and a binary package manager. I tried it, liked it, and have used it since. The package management tool (Entropy) is nice. It feels a lot like Portage, but also handles a few other tasks (configuration updates, mirror selection, etc.) within the tool itself. It's a nice compromise between Portage and the binary package managers you find in most popular systems.
pstack 13y ago
While there are occasionally other fun linux distros to toy with for a few days, I have never found any compelling reason to stray from Debian after it has served me on the desktop and at the server level for sixteen loyal years.
garrettdreyfus 13y ago
Yay Sabayon!
pan69 13y ago
I have been an Ubuntu user since 2005 and been horrified by the Gnome 3 and Unity desktop disasters and I've been stuck with Ubuntu 11.04 because it's the last release with Gnome 2. For the past 2 years I have been looking for a new desktop environment but failed to find something that would fit my basic needs until I recently tried XUbuntu again, this time version 13.10 and I must say, I'm blown away. This is what my current desktop looks like: http://i.imgur.com/BK2leWF.png http://i.imgur.com/BK2leWF.png No bells, no whistles but a plain a simple desktop for a developer to get stuff done. I absolutely love the latest Xfce release but more importantly, I have a stable distribution that's been around for quite some time so I'm confident I can use this for the next few years to come.

41 points by testrun 13y ago

facorreia 13y ago

Interesting. For my taste, I prefer Linux Mint Cinnamon.

_sabe_ 13y ago
Hey man, you were pretty fast trying out all those distros already!
- facorreia 13y ago
  No thanks. Life is too short for that. But here it goes anyway. Rosa: modified in Russia. I don't even want to know what shady things are going on in this distro. Korora: Fedora-based. Not for me. Chakra: KDE. Nope. Ubuntu Gnome: could be my second choice. But Ubuntu lost me, at least for the time being. Sabayon: Gentoo. Nope.
  - SirSkidmore 13y ago
    Just because it's modified in Russian makes it shady? That seems a little ridiculous.

cliveowen 13y ago

Deserve, not deserves.

testrun 13y ago
noted

kfk 13y ago

From the article: if I want to use Arch Linux without banging my head with the terminal, I should be able to do that Look, I got burned by Arch a couple of times and I finally dropped it after 2 years after some crazy nuts updates that broke my system even following the news section. HOWEVER, everybody does what they want, that's the point of linux and linux distros. You can't think like that, you simply can't. If a distro wants you to do crazy updates, you either do it or you go find another distro. The only thing I can say in your favor is that if somebody makes a derivative for simple folks like us, say Chakra, then it's mother distro community should not ditch on them, it's linux after all.

jlgaddis 13y ago
Knowing little about Arch Linux, I dismissed it entirely, even though a good sysadmin friend uses it exclusively on his laptop. In my personal life, I first installed Slackware in 1995 but had converted to Debian by 1997 and I've used that almost exclusively until the last two years or so (I have one RHEL6 and one FreeBSD server). I have, of course, used RHEL and Ubuntu previously in my professional life. About six months ago, I installed Arch Linux on a new Thinkpad W530. I didn't intend to really use it, I just wanted to see what the fuss was about. It's stuck around and I'm still running it and I haven't had the first problem with it. I'm not gonna be converting everything over to it, obviously, but it works for me on this laptop (which I do almost 100% of my work on). YMMV but IWFM.
- clarkm 13y ago
  Well, I hope you're subscribed to the announce mailing list then. Because breaking changes that require manual intervention do occur, and if you don't deal with them in a timely manner you'll be SOL. Waiting until the last minute to port all my init scripts to systemd was definitely not a good idea.
  - chadwickthebold 13y ago
    Yeah, Arch is a great distro for some specific use cases. I loved it when I was in college and had 3+ hours every other week to get my packages un-borked after some update, but nowadays I just don't have the time... Great distro for bleeding edge stuff, though!
  - nly 13y ago
    They do occur but they're rare. I remember the move from sysvinit to systemd taking about 10 minutes, and I have a 3 year old Arch install that has never outright broken on me after an update. Frankly I remember going through more pain every 6 months from in early Ubuntu days (although that's a lot better now also).
drdaeman 13y ago
Filesystem snapshots should make any upgrades almost painless. If it failed, roll back to a pre-update snapshot and in the meanwhile inspect changes from a post-upgrade version (branch) of the filesystem. Maybe even run this version in a VM. Sad things are: 1) almost no FS supports writeable snapshots and LVM snapshotting is far from being convenient; 2) you have to setup everything by hand.

theboywho 13y ago

Linux doesn't need more Linux Distributions, Linux needs new Desktop Environments.

DanBC 13y ago
What is missing from the available DEs?
- odonnellryan 13y ago
  I would say nothing, but they can be refined. This might get me hate, but the thing with using Windows for work and Linux for my personal projects: the GUI feels much more "refined" for Windows, even though that can be highly subjective...
  - mavhc 13y ago
    They just need the second 80% of work doing to them
- wanda 13y ago
  Nothing. It's what needs to be removed that's the problem. I basically never use a DE because xmonad is all I need, and if it needs to be customised, it's not limited at all.
  - dllthomas 13y ago
    Similar, but ratpoison for me.
    - wanda 13y ago
      I used to use dwm and I remember looking at ratpoison and wanting to use it, but I was learning Haskell at the time so I chose xmonad. and likewise when I'll care to learn Lua I'll move onto awesome-wm. Which will probably never happen.

fit2rule 13y ago

I'm intrigued enough by the Timeline view of ROSA that I'm downloading it now and preparing to boot it on the linuxhack machine I've got just for the purpose .. this is something I've wanted in a Desktop GUI for decades, and I'm quite interested in the implementation in ROSA - anyone used it yet, got an opinion based on experience? For me, a Temporal interface to the work I've done on the computer is the One thing missing from modern computer use interfaces. I've always thought that the primary index key for all data created on the computer should be date/time, and better tools for querying/navigating on that index should be developed for users .. but it seems there is some work to be done on making this interface mechanic sensible to the average user. It'd sure be beneficial to me anyway - I'm often thinking "what is that file I made last week .. name forgotten, but I remember when it was, roughly .." while looking for things - if a Time-weighted interface were oriented towards usability, it would be quite useful, imho.

icebraining 13y ago
Gnome is exploring the same space with Zeitgeist[1] and the Activity Journal, which are based on the same technology as ROSA's Timeline (Nepomuk). [1] http://zeitgeist-project.com/experience/ http://zeitgeist-project.com/experience/
- fit2rule 13y ago
  Thanks for the tip -I'll check it out, and now that I know its nepomuk behind the ROSA Timeline thingy, I can investigate things further without much fuss .. appreciate the tip!

xfalcox 13y ago

I'm using Gnome Ubuntu at work, and its a great experience, even on my multi monitor setup.

keithpeter 13y ago

One comment on OA asks why fully free distros left out; Trisquel, Parabola and I'd add gNewSense 3.0. Unless of course the OA thinks these get enough love already!

wanda 13y ago

Sad that Bedrock Linux is not on that list. Also, why bother with Sabayon over Gentoo? If configuring gentoo is too time-consuming just stick to arch or ubuntu/ubuntu derivative.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
supergauntlet 13y ago
Source-based distro where you can use binary packages unless you need to build from source? Sounds good to me.
- ParadigmComplex 13y ago
  I'm not sure I'd describe Bedrock Linux quite like that. Rather, the idea is that you can install packages from just about any other distribution, including things which are typically seen as mutually exclusive. The majority of the system can be comprised of packages from something known to be stable like Debian or CentOS, while still having easy access to things like packages from Arch (including Arch's AUR), retain extremely good library compatibility with popular Ubuntu for precompiled non-distro-provided things like proprietary software, and still get to leverage the flexibility tools like Gentoo's portage provides. So, yes, you could use binary packages unless you need to build from source - Bedrock Linux can fit that design if you want it to work that way. That's a perfectly fine way to use it. But I would frame that as one of a number of ways to go about things, as the system is quite flexible.
  - supergauntlet 13y ago
    I was referring to Sabayon but sure.
    - ParadigmComplex 13y ago
      Ah, I misunderstood and feel silly. My apologies.

gaius 13y ago

2 Red Hats, a Debian, an Arch and a Gentoo.

ollybee 13y ago

One of the most important things I look for in a Linux distribution or any software project I may rely on for a long time is it's organisational structure. Is there a committee, Benevolent Dictator for Life, sponsoring company etc. It's not exciting stuff but any project wanting people to spend time and effort on it should make sure they have thought about that stuff and let people know what to expect. It would be nice if short reviews like this made some mention of that aspect of the different distributions.

staticelf 13y ago

I am surprised that no one has mentioned Elementary OS in the comments yet.

jbeja 13y ago
I did!.

dlsym 13y ago

Manjaro (http://manjaro.org/ http://manjaro.org/) works great for me. Arch linux without much pain and with XFCE.

nly 13y ago
Looks cool. Does it have access to the Arch repos, or is it actually a full fork?
- dlsym 13y ago
  It has full access to all arch repos including aur. Edit: I guess you can think of it like "arch with an installer and configured desktop environment".

jbeja 13y ago

They i have nice Logos.

TacticalCoder 13y ago

As a very long time Linux user distributions which I find intriguing are the ones using the "Nix" package manager. Nix describes itself as a "purely functional" package manager. As I understand it you don't need to have admin rights to install package (something I always found very, very odd since 20 years or so with both .rpm and .deb based distros: why the heck do I need to be admin to install packages that basically only one user is ever going to use?). With Nix you can also install simultaneously several version of the same package (even for a single user if I understand it correctly). I really wish something like that would one day "catch up" in the Linux world and see what gives. By the way this is in no way a harsh criticism of Debian or anything: I'm a "20-years long" Linux desktop user and a "Debian die-hard" fan :) But I find the concept behind Nix really intriguing and apparently there are regular releases.

rlpb 13y ago
> why the heck do I need to be admin to install packages This is being solved in mainstream distributions by adding another layer of abstraction, instead of trying to do within "traditional" userspace. We're rapidly moving towards a multi-VM model (be it full virtualisation or LXC) where all users "have root" inside their own containers. Not being able to install the packages you want isn't an issue when you can quickly and easily create a VM or container and do it in there, all within your existing userspace privileges on the host system. It's no longer about who has root on a particular machine. It's now just a distinction between who manages a system and who uses that system. If you want to manage a system instead of just using it, you can achieve that by having your own entire system by spawning a container or VM, rather than just being limited to your home directory. The cost in disk space is negligible in today's terms. The cost of memory in a VM is still significant, but LXC eliminates that issue.

jbeja 13y ago

I am using Elementary Os Luna, the best at the moment. No crashes, pleasant to see and boots and runs pretty fast.

Joister 13y ago

I want to throw [1]Crunchbang into the mix. I use it for all my dev VMs. [1]http://crunchbang.org/ http://crunchbang.org/

drdaeman 13y ago

Is there anything innovative or just fun in those? For example, Gobolinux (now dead) tried to restructure the filesystem. NixOS (pretty obscure) tries to innovate with package management. Vyatta (dead, don't miss this one) tried to bring Cisco-like look-and-feel CLI for GNU/Linux based routing. And so on. What's fancy in those mentioned distros - I mean, except for the packages they have installed and/or pre-configured by default?

reikonomusha 13y ago
A long, long time ago when I was learning C++, I remember the Gobolinux folks were always happy to make new packages ("recipes" as they were called) for me and add them to the repo. In particular, I remember them kindly adding Code::Blocks. The people behind it were truly generous with their time, and Gobo had, in my opinion, absolutely outstanding ideas. I do wish it took off.

snarfff 13y ago

It's nice to see Sabayon mentioned. I've been using it at work for a few years now. I'd used Gentoo for a long time at home previously, and wanted something at work that felt like it, but didn't have time for the tedious installation process, nor the long builds if I suddenly needed to pull in a large number of packages for other purposes. These are the very issues Sabayon purported to address with an out-of-the-box setup and a binary package manager. I tried it, liked it, and have used it since. The package management tool (Entropy) is nice. It feels a lot like Portage, but also handles a few other tasks (configuration updates, mirror selection, etc.) within the tool itself. It's a nice compromise between Portage and the binary package managers you find in most popular systems.

pstack 13y ago

While there are occasionally other fun linux distros to toy with for a few days, I have never found any compelling reason to stray from Debian after it has served me on the desktop and at the server level for sixteen loyal years.

garrettdreyfus 13y ago

Yay Sabayon!

pan69 13y ago

I have been an Ubuntu user since 2005 and been horrified by the Gnome 3 and Unity desktop disasters and I've been stuck with Ubuntu 11.04 because it's the last release with Gnome 2. For the past 2 years I have been looking for a new desktop environment but failed to find something that would fit my basic needs until I recently tried XUbuntu again, this time version 13.10 and I must say, I'm blown away. This is what my current desktop looks like: http://i.imgur.com/BK2leWF.png http://i.imgur.com/BK2leWF.png No bells, no whistles but a plain a simple desktop for a developer to get stuff done. I absolutely love the latest Xfce release but more importantly, I have a stable distribution that's been around for quite some time so I'm confident I can use this for the next few years to come.