Looking to Replace Ubuntu 13.10 with other Distros

[swhit3]

I've been using Ubuntu for a few years and I am frustrated with 13.10. I've found it to be very buggy, day to day use is annoying, apps freeze and crash regularly, even after a fresh install. I really enjoyed 12.04 and even 13.04 Raring was equally impressive, but 13.10 has shaken my passion for Ubuntu. So I am asking the community for any other alternatives for a Linux distro that is stable, well established, regularly updated (possibly rolling release), that has a community similar to Ubuntu's in terms of forum help and how to tutorials on the web. I'm currently looking at Fedora and Manjaro, not very interested in Linux Mint, but what are some viable possibilities? Any help is appreciated!

[Iowan]

Personally, I still use 12.04. You could revert to either 12.04 or 13.04 (which you liked) and await 14.04. The tutorials/forum should be familiar.

[bachtobach]

I'm looking at Manjaro as well, looks to be stable and a solid distro with great support. I've asked a few things on the forum and IRC and everyone seems very friendly and willing to help. Only tried it on a live usb stick and I liked it. New command lines to learn but that shouldn't be too much of an issue. I'm hoping to install it this weekend to test it (as well as to test my graphics card with later kernels) but I think it could be the one I stick with. At least until I have the knowledge and courage for Arch or Gentoo!

Also, I've heard great things about OpenSUSE so that might be worth looking in to.

[mörgæs]

Before leaving the Buntu family completely I suggest that you try a clean install of Lubuntu 13.10. It's about as stable as it gets.

[kurt18947]

I find 13.10 pretty good, minimal problems since its release. I've messed with OpenSUSEs Gnome flavor a little. It seems fairly familiar as my default Ubuntu desktop is gnome as well.

[vasa1]

In the last day or so there seem to have have been quite a few threads started with nearly the same content

[monkeybrain20122]

Well if you were happy with 12.04 then why even ask? Just reinstall it and you have support til 2017.

But if you must find something outside the *buntu family I second Manjaro, I have a partition running it and I am quite impressed. If you install the non free image then everything (codecs, flash, video drivers) works out of the box and it is fast. It is based on Arch but is as easy to use as Ubuntu or Mint. It comes with xfce and kde flavours, but you can easily install other DEs (except Unity, which is a Ubuntu thing, but there is a semi working port in AUR)

If you use Manjaro definitely you must learn how to install stuffs from AUR (ArhUserReositoriy) with yaourt. The standard repository for Manajaro is kind of thin and many third party software (Chrome, skype, etc) only provides .deb and .rpm for Linux so they are not directly installable, but you can find them in AUR along with many strange and cool stuffs that you won't find in standard Ubuntu or Fedora repos. Oh, and it is rolling so there will be no need to upgrade. So far it has been very stable.

[kevdog]

Ohhh, watch the AURs. Id try to install the least amount out of them if possible -- I know its inevitable. You'll need some packages that are not included in the standard libraries, however when there is a major kernel or DE upgrade, it always seems when something crashes upon reboot, its do to something previously installed from the AUR that wasn't properly upgraded for the change.

[jeehyun]

Ubuntu gnome or mint will be good. Debian distros are easy to manage os.

[buzzingrobot]

I've been using Ubuntu for a few years and I am frustrated with 13.10. I've found it to be very buggy... alternatives for a Linux distro that is stable, well established, regularly updated (possibly rolling release), that has a community similar to Ubuntu's in terms of forum help and how to tutorials on the web. I'm currently looking at Fedora and Manjaro, not very interested in Linux Mint, but what are some viable possibilities?

My 13.10 experience doesn't mirror your experience., but c'est la vie.Could be any number of reasons for that.

If you can determine the attributes you are looking for in a distribution, that will help you find something you like without getting stuck in a loop of distrohopping.

For instance, if you like Unity, then a look at 12.04 LTS is probably in order. If you want a more traditional panel-based interface, don't trust anything built on Ubuntu 13.10 (like Mint 16) then you're looking at XFCE/MATE/Cinnamon/LXDE on another platform.

If you want the latest and greatest no matter what, there's Arch and Debian Sid. Or, you could plant yourself firmly in Fedora's things-will-certainly-break development cycle, aka Rawhide.

Desktop environments and window managers can be installed on any distribution, so those should not lead your decision.

A tension exists between reliability and regularly updated. I.e., the more things change, the more likely something will introduce unexpected bugs, which in turn drives more change. So, at one end of the spectrum, we have distributions like Red Hat/CentOS/Scientific that are famously stable and supported for years. Excellent documentation, especially from Red Hat. The down side: An old software base that balks at running many contemporary desktop applications and an OS and community primarily focused on server installations.

Just a bump along the way is Debian Stable. Strong community and can run the usual contemporary apps, although tomorrow's bleeding edge might be a bit dicey. Good documentation.

As rolling releases, Arch and its canned derivatives like Manjaro will see the most frequent changes. That's good for security and bug fixes. Getting on the rolling release bandwagon means learning the procedures specific to that distribution and making an effort to stay up to speed with the state of the release at any given time. (I did it for a bit. Tried to run the updates a day or two after availabililty to see if others identified problems. In the end, the lure of the beeding edge faded.)

I've used Fedora a great deal and it is a fascinating product. Strong community (altho the forum is an independent project) with experienced knowledgable people. Fedora 20 is due to be released in a couple of weeks. I've found its alpha and beta test releases to be very stable.