cbennett926
December 8th, 2012, 10:54 AM
I distro-hopped this week, I made sure to try at least one distro a day, I ended using Arch, Fedora, and Linux Mint.
Arch -
Most time consuming to set up and actually the reason I didn't get through 5 distro's.
It felt really nice after getting it set up though, you really feel like it's yours if that makes sense. I didn't feel too down and bad about the lack of flashy things because it was difficult to get it set up. More like challenging, not really difficult but a challenge so it was more worth while.
I highly recommend this to someone who's between the gap of intermediate Linux user and expert, it presents a great challenge for someone who feels stuck in the learning process.
Linux Mint -
And now to get to the other side of the spectrum, Mint is a derivative of Ubuntu so it had the same feel too it, albeit pre 11.10, and it was refreshing (pun intended) to have the menu bar not engulf the entire desktop compared to Unity/Gnome 3.6 (I do know you can use classic, but I am going defaults here). I would have to crituqe the scheme of the Software Manager Linux Mint uses, they have the ratings overlaying the stars so it poses some redundancy. On the same term of redundancy Mint and Fedora have something in common, but I will save that for Fedora. Mint is a very quick and responsive DE and I highly recommend it to someone with a slower machine, or perhaps someone looking for something more efficient and to what they are used to. Overall great distro and I highly recommend it to users of all degrees.
Fedora -
A Red Hat breakoff, Fedora is a wonderful DE for someone who really wants to get the most out of Gnome. Fedora runs on the latest release of Gnome and it is nice and quick. I actually found it more responsive than Unity on my system. I would say however it is much more difficult to get additional drivers, codecs, and such as they do not come preloaded on Fedora, and you have to hunt them down as well as their packages. I also dislike their menu's lack of "pinning" things to the left hand side as easily. As for the redundancy I mentioned in the Mint review, when running a browser, or any menu for that matter, the title of the window is listed three times, once in the tab for the window, the header for the window, and lastly in the panel's name for the application
Demonstration being:
Firefox in Panel: "Ubuntu Forums - Post New Thread"
Firefox Window Title: "Ubuntu Forums - Post New Thread"
Tab Title: "Ubuntu Forums - Post New Thread"
I personally think they can do without the window header and it would flow much better.
I ended up coming back to Ubuntu and felt at home, this may be because I didn't force myself to marry the other distro's but I just perfer the desktop space Unity and Ubuntu have to offer, all while haveing the applets in the panel. I can also crituque Ubuntu on a few things:
Speed - Ubuntu has a history of running sluggish compared to other Distro's (due to Unity) but it is definitely getting faster and we have a lot of time to grow
Crashing - One thing I did notice on other distro's is the lack of crashes, this might be because I am on 12.10 but I noticed many crashes on 12.04 as well.
Configurability - I had to make a word up for this one, but the amount of things you can configure in the other distro's is greatly different. Arch is a ground up configuration so that self explanatory. Linux Mint you can configure how EVERYTHING looks. Lastly during installation of Fedora I really felt in control of how everything was being set up.
I really love how open the Linux community is and I hope I didn't write this whole article? Blog? Whatever it is, in vain and someone found this useful! ):P
All the best,
Cody Bennett
Arch -
Most time consuming to set up and actually the reason I didn't get through 5 distro's.
It felt really nice after getting it set up though, you really feel like it's yours if that makes sense. I didn't feel too down and bad about the lack of flashy things because it was difficult to get it set up. More like challenging, not really difficult but a challenge so it was more worth while.
I highly recommend this to someone who's between the gap of intermediate Linux user and expert, it presents a great challenge for someone who feels stuck in the learning process.
Linux Mint -
And now to get to the other side of the spectrum, Mint is a derivative of Ubuntu so it had the same feel too it, albeit pre 11.10, and it was refreshing (pun intended) to have the menu bar not engulf the entire desktop compared to Unity/Gnome 3.6 (I do know you can use classic, but I am going defaults here). I would have to crituqe the scheme of the Software Manager Linux Mint uses, they have the ratings overlaying the stars so it poses some redundancy. On the same term of redundancy Mint and Fedora have something in common, but I will save that for Fedora. Mint is a very quick and responsive DE and I highly recommend it to someone with a slower machine, or perhaps someone looking for something more efficient and to what they are used to. Overall great distro and I highly recommend it to users of all degrees.
Fedora -
A Red Hat breakoff, Fedora is a wonderful DE for someone who really wants to get the most out of Gnome. Fedora runs on the latest release of Gnome and it is nice and quick. I actually found it more responsive than Unity on my system. I would say however it is much more difficult to get additional drivers, codecs, and such as they do not come preloaded on Fedora, and you have to hunt them down as well as their packages. I also dislike their menu's lack of "pinning" things to the left hand side as easily. As for the redundancy I mentioned in the Mint review, when running a browser, or any menu for that matter, the title of the window is listed three times, once in the tab for the window, the header for the window, and lastly in the panel's name for the application
Demonstration being:
Firefox in Panel: "Ubuntu Forums - Post New Thread"
Firefox Window Title: "Ubuntu Forums - Post New Thread"
Tab Title: "Ubuntu Forums - Post New Thread"
I personally think they can do without the window header and it would flow much better.
I ended up coming back to Ubuntu and felt at home, this may be because I didn't force myself to marry the other distro's but I just perfer the desktop space Unity and Ubuntu have to offer, all while haveing the applets in the panel. I can also crituque Ubuntu on a few things:
Speed - Ubuntu has a history of running sluggish compared to other Distro's (due to Unity) but it is definitely getting faster and we have a lot of time to grow
Crashing - One thing I did notice on other distro's is the lack of crashes, this might be because I am on 12.10 but I noticed many crashes on 12.04 as well.
Configurability - I had to make a word up for this one, but the amount of things you can configure in the other distro's is greatly different. Arch is a ground up configuration so that self explanatory. Linux Mint you can configure how EVERYTHING looks. Lastly during installation of Fedora I really felt in control of how everything was being set up.
I really love how open the Linux community is and I hope I didn't write this whole article? Blog? Whatever it is, in vain and someone found this useful! ):P
All the best,
Cody Bennett