Anyone here uses Linux and can recommend me a good distro?

Arjun

Arjun

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Anyone here uses Linux and can recommend me a distro?
 
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It all depends on your need and experience. If you are completely new to Linux and know little to nothing going in and need a lot of friendly, helpful, common support, go with Ubuntu (which is based on Debian). If you're needing more scientific, developer centric, or you're learning for career needs (like learning linux for your resume) then go with an rpm based distro like Fedora. If you go rpm based, you'll encounter a lot of "RTFM you n00b!!!". (Yes, I used to work for Red Hat and the community generally is ego driven.)

It really comes down to .deb based or rpm based. After that, your choices are about as varied as the color of a car.
 
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Years ago I used to use OpenSUSE, Fedora, Ubuntu, and Sabayon. The list of distros grow everyday. Ubuntu looks a little outdated. ElementaryOS is a little too over-simpified. Is there a sweet spot? Is there a one size fits all distro that's been in existence for years and has a good reputation and is a better alternative to a Mac and Windows.
 
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Arjun said:
Years ago I used to use OpenSUSE, Fedora, Ubuntu, and Sabayon. The list of distros grow everyday. Ubuntu looks a little outdated. ElementaryOS is a little too over-simpified. Is there a sweet spot? Is there a one size fits all distro that's been in existence for years and has a good reputation and is a better alternative to a Mac and Windows.
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Mint!

No, wait.. LinDows!

ok.. I haven't kept up with all the new ones. A lot really depends on what you like to do with the box, and the style of GUI you like.

In terms of better... I also use mac and windows. Each has it's value, again I mostly look at the application / work that needs to be done and then pick the appropriate OS for it.
 
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I thought LinDows disappeared from the inter-web due to Microsoft's lawsuit many years back
 
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Arjun said:
Years ago I used to use OpenSUSE, Fedora, Ubuntu, and Sabayon. The list of distros grow everyday. Ubuntu looks a little outdated. ElementaryOS is a little too over-simpified. Is there a sweet spot? Is there a one size fits all distro that's been in existence for years and has a good reputation and is a better alternative to a Mac and Windows.
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Well, what it "looks like" can be easily changed by changing the desktop. Again, that's essentially the paint on the car. Want a different desktop, install one. There's dozens to choose from. Elementary is just Ubunt with a more polished desktop laid over it. Look at PeppermintOS. Same thing. Ubuntu with a pretty cover.

The one size fits all question will surely start a flame war most places. I doubt you'll ever find an overall answer on that. It depends on what you need. I would say to find the OS that gives you the core you need and then just lay over the interface.

For example, I used Fedora with Cinnamon desktop on it for years. It was more friendly interface but still had the core that I needed for my work. You can also run Cinnamon on Ubuntu as well.
 
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If Elementary is just Ubuntu, why can't I just install Ubuntu and apply the Elementary skin on top of that? Too many distros, lol
Mint is something I can look into and will start from there :)
 
Mint Cinnamon is possibly the closest to the Windows UI. I imagine a different one is closet to Mac OS. I use Mint Cinnamon.
 
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Arjun said:
If Elementary is just Ubuntu, why can't I just install Ubuntu and apply the Elementary skin on top of that? Too many distros, lol
Mint is something I can look into and will start from there :)
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You can. Why don't you buy a black car and paint it red though? Likely because you can buy a red one from the start. :)

There's even a "Hannah Montanna" distrib. Someone took Ubuntu, colorized the desktop and renamed it "Hannah Montanna Linux". That's pretty close to what Elementary and Peppermint is. They just took something and made it "prettier".

Mint is just a .deb based (Ubuntu) with the Mint skin on top of it. Really, under the hood, there's only a few actual different engines that power a distribution. The rest is the skin over it.

(reminds me I forgot about Mint. When I used Ubuntu, that's what I used. It was very friendly.)
 
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I used to favor KDE over GNOME. Cinnamon is fairly new

My favorite UI feature in the past was the rotating desktop feature---I first came across this in Sabayon Linux
 
psycik said:
Ubuntu server, no gui's here - yuck
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hehehe..... I hear ya! I always used to tease the devs at work who said "command line only here" by asking them if they surfed the web via command line. Yes, you CAN, but it's not really fun, easy or interesting. In short, there's the right tool for the job. Running a server, why do you need a desktop interface running? Just run CLI. Running a desktop, I doubt many want to not use a desktop interface.

For servers, I use Fedora or CentOS. Fedora is just the upstream, more cutting edge. The problem with cutting edges is that they can make you bleed. If you need stable, safe, go with CentOS which is just Red Hat Linux that has been released (slowly and begrudgingly by them) back to open source. But then where does Red Hat get their OS to start with you may ask? From Fedora. :) Red Hat really makes very little on their own. They get the raw code from the upstream (Fedora), polish it, work out more of the Bugs, provide tech support 24/7 and charge you a kings ransom to do so. If you don't need the support, then get CentOS and be your own support. The obvious catch 22 here is if you're a company and need that support. Canonical is the same way except they don't rebrand like Red Hat does. They just charge for the support and they're a LOT smaller and slower with support.

Yeah, I worked for them a bit too.
 
Arjun said:
I used to favor KDE over GNOME. Cinnamon is fairly new

My favorite UI feature in the past was the rotating desktop feature---I first came across this in Sabayon Linux
Click to expand...
Well.....maybe 10yrs I guesstimate? When I started linux in fall of 2000, I favored KDE on SuSE also. Gnome surprisingly enough has came a long way in the past 3yrs actually. I still prefer Mint or Cinnamon. just imho
 
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The plan is I'll use a distro for personal use, for just about everything (productivity, browsing, light gaming, and a little video/photo editing). All in one package. Is Mint OS still the viable choice?
 
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Also wanted to ask, which distribution comes with a preloaded app store (that also includes Spotify from the app store). I find it tedious to run the installer through the terminal (although that's the fun part :p)
I'm pretty serious about using Linux for day to day work. I'll start this in experimental mode and go from there.
 
Mint, Ubuntu and several others are based on Debian. You can install Spotify on any distro based on Debian, see video below where you can either install it from the website, or install it from the command line. I know that MX Linux had it in their package installer. If you like the OSX interface, you can mod the look...I've seen it done with MATE, I would think it can be done using Cinnamon.

Current Release Features – MX Linux

mxlinux.org mxlinux.org

 
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Installed Ubuntu Linux along side Windows 10 on my work laptop. What I don't like is the GRUB bootloader. I prefer the Windows Boot Loader. However, the problem is that I'm using the GUID partition table with UEFI enabled. Any suggestions what I should do? Thanks in advance :)
 
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