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View Full Version : What is the best Linux OS you've used?



gymophett
February 18th, 2009, 04:25 AM
I've only used Ubuntu, no others, but I'm up to mess around with other Linux distros. Through your experience, which was the best for you?

SonnHalter
February 18th, 2009, 04:27 AM
1.ubuntu
2.sabayon
3.Mint
4.Arch (soon to rise to number one though)
5.openSUSE

handy
February 18th, 2009, 04:27 AM
Arch by a mile.

Nothing in my 23 years of computing gets close to it.

Stan_1936
February 18th, 2009, 04:28 AM
1. Crunchbang Linux 8.10.02 Lite Edition --> It automatically detected my printer and sound card. I prefer superior hardware detection to eye candy.
2. Ubuntu 8.04 --> same as above + multimedia plays flawlessly

and1bskbl72
February 18th, 2009, 04:29 AM
I love ubuntu and I have tried other distros and always come back to ubuntu. Widely supported and always up to date with the latest features. I can't wait to use ext4 file system in the next public release... but to try another distro the one's that stand out are

1) Linux Mint
2) Fedora
3) Open Suse

Rokurosv
February 18th, 2009, 04:29 AM
Arch, Fedora and Debian

Simian Man
February 18th, 2009, 04:30 AM
Fedora by a long shot. Then the old Mandrake, I don't really care for Mandriva though.

OutOfReach
February 18th, 2009, 04:35 AM
1. Arch
2. Fedora

orc_dragoon
February 18th, 2009, 04:35 AM
1.xubuntu
2. Vector
3. Puppy

mohitchawla
February 18th, 2009, 04:37 AM
Puppy Linux, Ubuntu and LFS.

Grant A.
February 18th, 2009, 04:37 AM
1. Arch
2. Xubuntu
3. OpenSuSE

smartboyathome
February 18th, 2009, 04:39 AM
Arch, Puppy Linux, and Ubuntu are my top 3. :)

perlluver
February 18th, 2009, 04:41 AM
I agree with all of the above, and if you are looking for more advanced maybe, Slackware or Gentoo.

Chilli Bob
February 18th, 2009, 04:45 AM
Ubuntu, Puppy and now DSL-Not (may be better than puppy!!)

Want to give Arch a try when I have time. Looks sweet.

Jesterday
February 18th, 2009, 04:47 AM
What no one said Corel Linux??? It was awesome, back in 1999 as far as Linux Distros went back then. It ran flawlessly on my P3 450 with 256MB Ram, and since I worked at a computer store which was Corel's leading distributor in Ottawa, Michael Copeland came to the store and gave me Corel Linux, WordPerfect for Linux and CorelDraw for Linux.

But in all seriousness it was pretty good for ease of install and overall usability, Ubuntu still wins though.

smartboyathome
February 18th, 2009, 04:51 AM
DSL-Not

Isn't that project dead? It seems to be, after not having a release for a few years.

namegame
February 18th, 2009, 04:53 AM
+1 for Arch

Twitch6000
February 18th, 2009, 04:54 AM
PClinuxOS 2008 Gnome Edition (I like PClinuxOS and I like Gnome adding the two together was genius :D.

Other then that Linux Mint 6

JackieChan
February 18th, 2009, 04:56 AM
1. Ubuntu
2. Arch
3. Fedora
4. Mandriva

I've only briefly used Arch, Fedora, and Mandriva. I'll have to explore them a bit more, but as of right now Ubuntu is my favorite.

mayorpacmanjones
February 18th, 2009, 04:58 AM
1 Ubuntu <---Perfection
2 Windows XP Home SP1 <--- Before it crashed
3 Slax <--- Small, great for using as a live cd
4 Puppy <--- Small and lighting fast
5 Mac OS Tiger <---- Its pretty secure and fast
6 Linpus <--- Tried on the Asus Eee Pc at TOYS R US

pol666
February 18th, 2009, 05:00 AM
Debian, Ubuntu and Suse.

spcwingo
February 18th, 2009, 05:00 AM
1) Ubuntu
2) Puppy
3) Mandriva

crimesaucer
February 18th, 2009, 05:04 AM
Move this thread to Other OS please. (ha-ha!)

bsharp
February 18th, 2009, 05:05 AM
1.Ubuntu (used the longest)
2.Arch (as I use it more and learn the differences, this is likely to replace Ubuntu.)

Arch is the fastest functional distro I've tried, at the expense of a more difficult install and configuration. Revived a P4 2GHz 256 MB and runs faster than my C2Q 2.4GHz 2GB thanks to the infinite control over what is installed.

swoll1980
February 18th, 2009, 05:29 AM
1.Ubuntu (used the longest)
2.Arch (as I use it more and learn the differences, this is likely to replace Ubuntu.)

Arch is the fastest functional distro I've tried, at the expense of a more difficult install and configuration. Revived a P4 2GHz 256 MB and runs faster than my C2Q 2.4GHz 2GB thanks to the infinite control over what is installed.

Ubuntu
Mint
Debian
Mandriva
PClinuxOS

Top three very similer to each other, bottom 2 as well.

id1337x
February 18th, 2009, 05:42 AM
Ubuntu of course! Why else would I be on this site?? :)

SunnyRabbiera
February 18th, 2009, 05:50 AM
Ubuntu, debian, Mandriva, Mepis and Mint seem to be good in my opinion.

tjwoosta
February 18th, 2009, 05:57 AM
1. Arch

2. Debian

3. FreeBSD (not linux, i know, but same idea)

4. Ubuntu

5. openSUSE

the8thstar
February 18th, 2009, 06:03 AM
Ubuntu 8.10

... and close behind : Windows 7 Beta, Windows Vista Home Premium, CrunchBang Linux 8.10.2 and Mac OS X 10.5.

MasterNetra
February 18th, 2009, 06:50 AM
I've played with a number of Linux OS's and almost gave up on linux until after i got into college (2007) and met a Ubuntu user who introduced me to Ubuntu, and though i look around and try live-cd versions of other distros i come across of, i generally still stick with Ubuntu...Now if Ubuntu can only help me find a gf and do my taxes :p

(Although Puppy Linux is the only distro thus far in which my wireless works on install x.x)

sujoy
February 18th, 2009, 07:01 AM
1. Arch
2. Slackware
3. Debian
4. Zenwalk

RiceMonster
February 18th, 2009, 07:08 AM
Arch, Slackware, Zenwalk

MikeTheC
February 18th, 2009, 07:12 AM
That depends.

For servers, I'd go with Debian. Stability is more important to me on a server than any other consideration.

For desktops, Ubuntu wins this hands-down. It's stable -- far more so than any other desktop Linux distro I've tried -- and it's by far the most refined and overall user-friendly one I've tried.

Now, on the other hand, if you were asking what the best Linux distro documentation I've ever seen was, then I'd have to say that honor goes to SuSE, and SuSE alone. I don't know what it looks like now, but "way back yonder" they were putting out documentation that rivaled every professional self-help or otherwise technical-related book or magazine article I'd ever seen.

thisllub
February 18th, 2009, 09:15 AM
Arch

Eisenwinter
February 18th, 2009, 09:19 AM
Arch

adamlau
February 18th, 2009, 10:37 AM
1. Arch
2. Ubuntu Minimal
3. Vector

Liviu-Theodor
February 18th, 2009, 11:09 AM
I haven't tried many of Linux (and/or Unix) distributions, but I have tried/and or used RedHat, Mandriva (when was called Mandrake), OpenSuse, Ubuntu, Fedora and OpenSolaris (this is not Linux, but it is still quite similar). I liked probably most of them, in various degree, but I'd go with Ubuntu as the best Linux OS I have used.

matthew.ball
February 18th, 2009, 12:24 PM
I played with Slackware 8 (about 5 years ago?) but the PC I had it on died, and I couldn't be bothered to get a new one.

Come earlier this year, and I decided to get a laptop for school, Linux was the obvious choice really, and I know a guy who has been using Ubuntu for a few years, he only said good things so I assumed it would be good.

My assumptions have pretty much been confirmed.

I'd be interested in Open SuSE though. (I have downloaded the 11.1 iso, but I don't really want to dual boot, and this Ubuntu install is too good).

Vince4Amy
February 18th, 2009, 01:06 PM
1. Slackware
2. openSuSE
3. Fedora
4. Arch

Chilli Bob
February 18th, 2009, 03:50 PM
Isn't that project dead? It seems to be, after not having a release for a few years.


Yeah, dammit. I went back and had a look and you are right. I only discovered it a few weeks ago from a link on lxer.com and have been using it on and off again since. Pity, it's a nice little distro.

qazwsx
February 18th, 2009, 03:58 PM
1. Debian unstable
2. Debian testing
3. Debian stable
4. Kubuntu

;)

aktiwers
February 18th, 2009, 03:59 PM
Nobody mentioned Knoppix?

tjwoosta
February 18th, 2009, 04:00 PM
results of votes so far (i only added up peoples first choices, disregaurding all the secondary choices)

ubuntu 14

arch 12

slackware 2

debian 2

crunchbang 1

mint 1

Fedora 1

xubuntu 1

puppy 1

pclinuxos 1

knoppix 1

openSUSE 1

EDIT: there were two votes above on this last page that showed up while i was typing, so i just added them

jeromey
February 18th, 2009, 04:02 PM
arch!

crimesaucer
February 18th, 2009, 08:20 PM
Arch

Bart_D
February 18th, 2009, 08:48 PM
1. Ubuntu 8.10
2. XUbuntu 8.04
3. Linux Mint(Elyssa)

ArtF10
February 18th, 2009, 08:52 PM
I've tried a lot but always come back to Ubuntu. Here's my top 5(+1):

1.Crunchbang Linux
2.Ubuntu 8.10
3.Puppy Linux......yeah it was blazing fast
4.Mint Linux XFCE (edition 5...can't remember the alphabet)
5.Xubuntu 8.04/7.04
6.Uubuntu 7.04

Northsider
February 18th, 2009, 09:18 PM
Ubuntu for me. I see a lot of votes for Arch, what makes it so special?

wolfen69
February 18th, 2009, 09:22 PM
ubuntu

mandriva

debian

puppy

those are the only distros i feel comfortable with, although i try out lots.

wolfen69
February 18th, 2009, 09:24 PM
results of votes so far (i only added up peoples first choices, disregaurding all the secondary choices)

ubuntu 14



geez, what a surprise that ubuntu is in the lead.

Cenotaph
February 18th, 2009, 09:29 PM
Ubuntu is the best Linux distro, imo, it's not perfect but it makes a great mainstream OS.

Arch is really cool if you are a GNU/Linux enthusiast. It might be interesting to a certain type of user (including myself), but experience tells me that the rolling release can bring some problems even if every kernel or driver is stable upon release, so i don't feel as comfortable using it for work.

Deep down i wish every distro was like Arch, but in the end i recognize the advantages of release plans like Ubuntu's or Debian's.

Simian Man
February 18th, 2009, 09:40 PM
Ubuntu for me. I see a lot of votes for Arch, what makes it so special?

Well it's a tinkerers distro. You have to set up everything yourself. I think its users tend to feel proud that they manage to make it work. It's kind of like the new Gentoo. It is also one of the most different of the distros listed here.

crimesaucer
February 18th, 2009, 10:24 PM
Well it's a tinkerers distro. You have to set up everything yourself. I think its users tend to feel proud that they manage to make it work. It's kind of like the new Gentoo. It is also one of the most different of the distros listed here.

The best thing about Arch is the pacman package manager and the ABS/AUR PKGBUILDS. (and the regular binary package repositories)


What you said above isn't untrue..... it does feel good knowing that you built your system from the ground up. I've learned so much about Linux since I started using Arch.


The minimal install is also nice to keep things fast. I recently got my boot up time down to 30 seconds..... and I haven't even switched to ext4 yet. (and i haven't done anything complex to the hooks or anything..... just some backgrounded daemons, a light install of xfce4, and a compiled kernel for my hardware stripped of things that I don't use)

kk0sse54
February 18th, 2009, 11:07 PM
Gentoo

BbUiDgZ
February 18th, 2009, 11:18 PM
Desktop - ubuntu
Server - debian
gateway - smoothwall or ipcop

and if you wan to do it from the ground up - LFS

kelvin spratt
February 18th, 2009, 11:25 PM
To find out why people love Arch you have to try it 1st. Yes their is a lot you need to configure but it all makes so much sense as its all in a few files, not here there and some where like in Debian/ubuntu etc.

ArtF10
February 18th, 2009, 11:36 PM
Ubuntu is the best Linux distro, imo, it's not perfect but it makes a great mainstream OS.

Arch is really cool if you are a GNU/Linux enthusiast. It might be interesting to a certain type of user (including myself), but experience tells me that the rolling release can bring some problems even if every kernel or driver is stable upon release, so i don't feel as comfortable using it for work.

Deep down i wish every distro was like Arch, but in the end i recognize the advantages of release plans like Ubuntu's or Debian's.

Well said.:p

jimi_hendrix
February 18th, 2009, 11:47 PM
ubuntu and windows7 (i am sorry world...i cant find a flaw in it other than the dos CLI is terrible and i prefer the *nix filesystem)

just curious: any opinions on BSD? </OT>

kk0sse54
February 18th, 2009, 11:54 PM
just curious: any opinions on BSD? </OT>

OP asked for the best Linux OS but for best OS in general of course for me it would be NetBSD :)

yther
February 19th, 2009, 12:29 AM
I'd say Gentoo was the best I've used until I tried Ubuntu, and if I wanted to be running bleeding-edge stuff I'd still be with it! It took me over 24 hours to compile OpenOffice 2.2, and that was with distributed cross-compiling, but dammit, it worked—and worked well. I also think I learned more about the way Linux works "under the hood" from Gentoo than from any other distro.

On the other hand, Ubuntu has my support now because it pretty much worked out of the box on my laptop, which led me to use it when I built my new desktop. If I can sit on my hands and not have to have the latest and greatest stuff, it should continue to be my favorite for a while.

maybeway36
February 19th, 2009, 12:31 AM
I prefer a customized Ubuntu system for basic use. For Live CDs, Slax all the way - I love its module system.

handy
February 19th, 2009, 01:59 AM
Ubuntu is the best Linux distro, imo, it's not perfect but it makes a great mainstream OS.

Arch is really cool if you are a GNU/Linux enthusiast. It might be interesting to a certain type of user (including myself), but experience tells me that the rolling release can bring some problems even if every kernel or driver is stable upon release, so i don't feel as comfortable using it for work.

Deep down i wish every distro was like Arch, but in the end i recognize the advantages of release plans like Ubuntu's or Debian's.

As long as you are familiar with the quick & simple procedure to downgrade packages there is really little to get in the way of Arch, if you do a system upgrade along the lines of a pacman -Syu & find that you have installed a some trouble that you don't understand, you simply & quickly downgrade back to where you were. This complete process would seldom take a person 5 minutes to do.

See this this link for the simple how-to:

http://grubbn.org/otheros/showthread.php?tid=11

handy
February 19th, 2009, 02:03 AM
Well said.:p

See post above? :p

handy
February 19th, 2009, 02:04 AM
ubuntu and windows7 (i am sorry world...i cant find a flaw in it other than the dos CLI is terrible and i prefer the *nix filesystem)

just curious: any opinions on BSD? </OT>

I use the FreeNAS which is built on FreeBSD, it is superb. :D

Cenotaph
February 19th, 2009, 03:02 AM
Well, just a couple of days ago i couldn't load the dbus and hal daemons and the computer wouldn't even start, it just locked up, so i would need to get some other way of accessing /etc/rc.conf, booting from USB with Arch Live or whatever, to get it to start and only then i could try that procedure. Im not even sure if that issue was caused by an upgrade, but its good enough as an example of what can go wrong with Arch.

With Ubuntu, unless we have "proposed" repositories enabled, you can feel confident that everything will be fine whenever we need to work, and that's important.

kk0sse54
February 19th, 2009, 03:43 AM
It took me over 24 hours to compile OpenOffice 2.2, and that was with distributed cross-compiling, but dammit, it worked—and worked well.

At least gentoo provides the option to install binaries for things like Firefox and Open Office to help save time so you don't have to spend 24 hours compiling OO :D

CJ Master
February 19th, 2009, 07:23 AM
1. Modified Linux Mint
2. Windows XP for games

binbash
February 19th, 2009, 11:35 AM
gentoo and ubuntu

Vorian Grey
February 19th, 2009, 04:17 PM
openSuse. For me it beats everything else I've used by a mile.

Kopachris
February 19th, 2009, 04:31 PM
Arch (even though I didn't stick with it long, it looked promising and intriguing)
LFS (for the excitement of having compiled it myself)
Debian (very intriguing learning tool, quite fun to setup)
Ubuntu (too watered-down to be actually enjoyable, but I still use it most)

My first experience with Linux was a Knoppix LiveCD my dad had when I was about 10-ish. We only booted into it every now and then, and I didn't know what it was, but it was intriguing from the very beginning.

missbliss
February 19th, 2009, 07:55 PM
I've only used two:

ubuntu 8.10
mandriva 2009


Ubuntu was my intro and I find it pretty intuitve to work with. Everything worked right away. Once I felt comfortable with Ubuntu I had a desire to try something else out and I picked Mandriva on a whim. At first I wasn't all that in to it, but I'm slowly warming up to it. One big difference is the ease of setting up the wireless. No hassles there, but in Ubuntu I had to open the terminal and tinker a bit.

I've got both running for now but have been mainly using Mandriva.


Looks like I might try Arch, though, since there seems to be a lot of praise for it, and I definitely enjoy tinkering and figuring things out.

notwen
February 19th, 2009, 08:01 PM
1. Debian Stable
2. Ubuntu
3. Arch

As much as I'd like to tinker w/ other distros, I'll take a Debian-based system any day of the week. =]

oldsoundguy
February 19th, 2009, 08:05 PM
been around since Mandrake 4

the best?

Always the NEXT one. (sometimes there is a hitch step backwards as between 8.04 and 8.10 for hardware .. but in general .. the next is almost always an improvement over the previous.)

grndslm
February 19th, 2009, 10:47 PM
In no particular order...

Arch - Great for Linux enthusiasts who want more control. Will prolly be switching to this distro very soon, as the majority of my problems with Ubuntu are not having the most up to date packages. A rolling release sounds like an awesome idea after the dependency hell I've been thru the last couple years.
Debian - Great for servers.
FreeBSD - Greatest concept (mono-OS design & ability to compile all packages including deps... or just install pre-built packages. *Really wish Arch had this feature*), but misses most of the Linux hype. It makes navigating the FS awkward as it is very similar to Linux, but just enough to irk you when trying to accomplish something.
MachBoot - Fastest booting liveCD that needs to be integrated into all liveCDs.
Ubuntu - Great for n00bs because of the philosophy & community. However, I'd say stability has fallen behind sometime during the last year. If other distros could detect hardware as well as Ubuntu, I don't think Ubuntu would exist for much longer.

fistfullofroses
February 19th, 2009, 10:59 PM
LinuxFromScratch
Slackware
Gentoo

fistfullofroses
February 19th, 2009, 11:00 PM
Always the NEXT one? As in NEXTStep?

manilaph
February 25th, 2009, 09:31 AM
MANDRIVA ONE 2009 - hands-down the best out-of-the-box Linux out there. Wifi works the best. I use this on my laptop

UBUNTU 8.10 - great community and lots of packages. I use this on my desktop pc since there are wireless issues. right now an unsolved issue is screen resolution. I tried the Mandriva One 2009 livecd on this same desktop and it recognizes the correct screen resolution... but I still kept Ubuntu on it.

LINUXMINT - tried it on both the laptop and desktop... it works like a charm.

gnomeuser
February 25th, 2009, 10:00 AM
Fedora, I greatly enjoy most aspect of it. Aside that I rather enjoy Foresight Linux and openSUSE. The earlier versions of Ubuntu also were very nice.

cmay
February 25th, 2009, 10:35 AM
the ones i use now.
debian lenny. for office and as backup computer. should and do always work.

crunch bang linuux as media and gaming pc. works always and is great for this purpose.

64studio for audio production. really the best and one of the only options for this in linux.

ubuntu 8.10 on my laptop. for all purposes.
other than having a printer attached i have the same files and all my stuff on this one as i do my debian install and i have all my music and half my movie collection too. i think of debian and ubuntu as my main OS for everyday computing.

i have a stack of cd and dvd counting over 50 different versions and distributions of homeburned linux and two years linux magazines linux dvd and i have the ones i got from a online store which sells linux cd so i been trying a lot of different linux. just not arch linux, from scratch ,gentoo and the more exotic like tty linux and tiny core linux yet. maybe i will one of these days but i doubt i will replace any of the ones i already use.