Quick, recommend a Linux distribution you like and that I haven't tried yet!
I'm bored, and I'm feeling adveturous. /t/louge, recommend a fun distro that is worth a try and isn't Debian, Ubuntu, Arch, Fedora, Mint or PuppyLinux!
EDIT: Actually, why limit this to Linux Distributions? Do you know any fancy Operating Systems that deserve some attention?
8 years ago by spoderman
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You really should post this into /t/linux as well. :P
I suppose you could give Gentoo a shot. That should be fun. ;)
Yeah, sounds like a great idea.
Why Gentoo? I'm definitly going to try it - but I have heard a lot of contradicory/crazy things about it.
I mostly recommended it because you said you were feeling adventurous. :D
I personally have not tried it out yet, but it is definitely on my bucket list to do so one day.
You can also try Sabayon which is based on Gentoo. From what I understand it is much easier to setup.
Thank you, this seems quite cool.
I've messed around with Bodhi, Elementary and Chakra a bit in the past and all of them were fun.
Which of them did you like best?
I liked them all for different things. Elementary is stable as fuck and that's always nice. Bodhi was extremely lightweight and Enlightenment window management system is really feature rich. Chakra was cool because it was based off of Arch so you could get some rolling-release goodness with KDE packaged in.
It really depends on what you want, but for a day to day OS I think reliability trumps "fun to play with" and out of the three would vote for Elementary.
I'm using Elementary now and it's solid as a rock. I've distro hopped,more or less for over 11 years. I plan to slap Manjaro on a vbox and give it a spin. I have two friends who are really enjoying it. Did you ever have problems with rolling releases?
Uhm I did, but that's because I have the "learn by breaking things" mentality, but I could have easily set up anything Arch based to run steady for me with minimal configuration issues. I just elected to continually try fucking with everything. Is Manjaro still Arch based, I'm so out of the loop...
It seems to me that you have spent some onsiderable time messing with desktop-distros, do you perhaps know some that use a tiling windiw manager?
Ill spent days of my youth you're talkin' about there. That being said, the tiling window managers were never something I could really get into. Don't get me wrong, I tried a bit, but in the end I decided that I personally didn't want to mess around with a bunch of configs to get them to do what I wanted them too, so I don't really know of too many distros that come with tiling WMs as they weren't really my cup 'o tea.
That being said, I've heard awesome things about Awesome WM (God I'm clever). And Enlightenment has some tiling like elements but can't really be considered a true tiling WM. It's been a couple of years since I've messed with a bunch of this stuff, so take anything I say with a grain of salt as the situation has probably changed considerably since I was really into it.
Have you ever tried i3? Thats the one im about to try out.
I never personally used it, no. That was one of the ones people seemed fond however.
i3 is a very nice tiling window manager (and my tiling window manager of choice).
Be sure that you read the documentation and check out the various configuration files people have available so that you can tweak your copy just the way you want it.
Thank you ;)
So far I have only heard good things about i3
They all can inherently can use tiling window managers. You just have to install the one that you wish to use.
The only distribution that I can recall at the moment which offers a tiling window manager right out of the box (a community edition which has i3) is Manjaro, but I don't really recommend them.
Why don't you recomend Manjaro?
They might be fine now, but they have done some questionable things in the past. That's why I don't really recommend them.
Could you please elaborate? I'm really interested.
Just to reiterate that this happened in the past and it probably isn't like this anymore.
They used to withhold important security updates under the guise of stability. Additionally, when their website's SSL cert expired they told people to reset/turn back their system clocks as their workaround.
Sound cheesy. But I really don't get the SSL thig - why not just get a new certificate?
I've only used Ubuntu [currently 14.04 on my laptop] and a really old version of puppy linux about 10 years ago.
I am not too adventurous with computers anymore I just have a hard time letting perfectly good hardware just sit there doing nothing. For me, I don't really care how powerful a distro is, as long as it's stable and somewhat plug-and-play.
That is sad to hear. Never stop playing ;)
Elementary OS is great! It looks visually appealing, it's functional and it's based on Ubuntu so it's very easy to use. Would recommend.
If you want to try something different maybe Gentoo.
I heard Gentoo is a lot of work, especially setting it up on a uefi-machine. Is there some sort of pre-installedd vbox image I can download, just to give it a try?
Netrunner is a solid distro. It's a lot more stable than it used to be (you can choose a Debian or Arch package base) and its developers are hellbent on creating a cutting edge Plasma 5 environment that people want to actually use. I don't use it as a daily driver but it's worth checking out.
This is the first time I hear about it. Does Netrunner have anything "special" besides beeing a preconfigure Desktop OS?
Thank you for the recomendation through, I'll consider it ;)
I've heard good things about Netrunner (which is a KDE centric distribution) in the past.
Most of the recomendatios seem to be desktop-os centric, do you maybe have a recomendation for something that is maybe used a server os?
If you want a decent server distribution I recommend either Debian or CentOS.
I once used CentOS for a Minecraft-server, but despite it lacking so many default utilities, it didn't apear faster to me than any "complete" distribution. Did I do something wrong or is it meant to be like that?
Which default utilities are you referring too?
A server distribution comes with a minimal pre-installed package set as there is no need for GUIs, etc. However, It comes with just about everything you need and anything else is generally in the repositories. (Adding the EPEL repository can sometimes be helpful as well) :)
A server's console isn't really going to feel faster than the console on your desktop distribution.
Yes, I know that - what I meant when I said that CentOS seems to be missing some Realy basic Unix commands.
Could you elaborate on that? It is an enterprise class server distribution so that shouldn't be the case.
I use it on one of my servers and I don't believe I've ever run into that. I suppose it depends on what you are trying to do with it though.
Nothing that sets it aside from other KDE-based distributions aside from coming with its own Plasma theme and some nifty stuff pre-installed, like Yakuake. I recommend it as an ideal pre-configured distribution. It has little fluff aside from the eye candy that defines its branding, and it provides a good jumping off point for intermediate users that want to move away from APT but perhaps might not be ready to roll their own system with Arch or something.
tl;dr: Nothing special aside from being super cool out of the box and telling your friends that you're on a distro called Netrunner. I mean, come on.
I agree that NetRunner is indeed a cool name.
Btw, does yakuake have any advantages over guake? I have been using guake forever without knowing it exists.
I'm running Korora, which is essentially a tricked out Fedora remix. OpenSuse is a rock solid desktop distro. I've been thinking of going back.
Just checked it out. Do you have any idea why they switched from the Gentoo-Base to the Fedora-thing?
Gentoo ended up incorporating a lot of the functionality that the Kororaa project provided (mainly a GUI installer). The creator started a new project after a hiatus and kept the name, I guess because he liked it.
Regarding Gentoo: What about all that systemd stuff? Why is it good/terrible?
The systemd controversy is linux wide. Systemd is a replacement for the old SysV init system. An init system is the software deamon that kicks everything else off and acts as a service manager. It's the first service to start at boot and the last to be killed during shutdown.
Systemd is controversial because it is not just an init system, it's a software suite that controls a wide variety of system functions. It manages user logins, event logging, network configuration, time settings, and device management. Its developers are also in the midst of replacing the kernel-based virtual terminal with their own console. This means that systemd doesn't follow the unix principle of doing one thing and doing it well. Some people don't like this, and believe that systemd "gets in their way." Others look forward to the change, as they hope it will stream line system management, making it more user friendly.
The truth is, unless you're a serious power user or sysadmin (I'm not), you probably won't interact with your OS on a level that it will get in your way. I've found it to be more intuitive, if anything. I'm not really concerned about it violating the unix principle. Most *nix operating systems have gotten way past the point of no return in that regard. See: Unix doesn't follow unix philosophy.
OK, my turn:
The fancies thing I have ever seen OS-wise is OS/2 Warp by IBM.
Second place goes to [DragonFly BSD] (https://www.dragonflybsd.org/)
Elementary OS!
This is the second time somebody brings up that one, what makes it so great/special, besides beeing yet another preconfigured desktop os?
People like it for its minimal and pleasing look. They took a lot of design cues from OS X.
You can see a screenshot of it on their website.
Pretty much this. It's very stable and the devs have a lot of pride in their product... just a recipe for a really good OS imo.