Best and Worst Linux Distros of 2013

[sammiev]

Best Distro (http://youtu.be/-0tXoRnHg1I) 2013.

[cessanfrancisco]

I guess 'best' and 'worst' are sort of subjective, right?

For me, personally, the worst would have been anything with KDE Plasma desktop. I really love KDE but for some reason, after a little time, it always ends up going buggy on me. The best would be just about anything without KDE Plasma desktop :)

[sammiev]

I found this Distro about 3 weeks a go ( SolydXK (http://solydxk.com/) ). I read about how good it was and how it updates on the monthly bases to the next stable level month after month with no expiry ever. I installed the Distro and been bored since. It was a pleasant surprise this morning when I watched Quids video. Glad I test more than one Distros at a time.

[linuxyogi]

Best distro for me is the one which is both rolling and stable at the same time. I am yet to find a distro which has these 2 characteristics at the same time.

Worst distro is any distro which is not user friendly and unstable. There are many examples.

[wagerrard2]

Note that Quidsup explicitly recommends SolydK for new users coming from Windows. Deciding on the "best" distros depends on the kind of user you have in mind. Pretty sure he, himself, is an Ubuntu user.

I've done an install of SolydK and agree with the specific points he makes about the distro. (Although, personally, for folks with *no* Windows experience -- a rare breed -- I'd go with Gnome Shell because it is considerably simpler and much more focused than KDE.)

The SolydK installer doesn't support use of multiple drives. E.g., you can't tell it to put /home on a second drive. (You can move partitions afterwards, but it's a bit tedious.) The SolydK folks are aware of this and I wouldn't be surprised to see an improved installer down the road.

[monkeybrain20122]

Best distro for me is the one which is both rolling and stable at the same time. I am yet to find a distro which has these 2 characteristics at the same time.

.

Try Manjaro Linux.

[cecilpierce]

Try Manjaro Linux.

+1 for me :P

[ajbozdar]

Best Distro (http://youtu.be/-0tXoRnHg1I) 2013.

For family Ubuntu is the best. In terms of profession, Fedora wins. I like its EDA and Robotics Spins. Here Fedora really beats Ubuntu and any other distro completely. In terms of speed, Arch and Gentoo are ahead of any distro for Admins. :)

[lykwydchykyn]

Looks like an interesting addition to the distro toolkit. I should check it out.

[QIII]

If someone held a gun to my head, it would be a hard choice between Fedora and Ubuntu.

[linuxyogi]

Try Manjaro Linux.


+1 for me :P

I have used Manjaro for almost a year. The problem with Manjaro is its package management. When I tried to install updates they failed to install displaying different errors in individual cases. Then I had to go to its IRC or forums to find a solution.

I also found their repositories to be very unreliable. They remain down very often.

[ajbozdar]

If someone held a gun to my head, it would be a hard choice between Fedora and Ubuntu.


Do you think Ubuntu fulfill engineering thirst? It's hard to program embedded systems using Ubuntu.

[germanix]

Apart from the dbus-deamon bug (100% cpu on startup) in Ubuntu 13.10 I am quite happy with Ubuntu. Tried OpenSuse (KDE)for the first time this year and was pleasantly surprised. Beautifull desktop, very stable, works out of the box. Definitely one of my favorates for 2013

[ajbozdar]

More and more guys are getting interested using OpenSuse. I would like to give a try. :)

[monkeybrain20122]

I have used Manjaro for almost a year. The problem with Manjaro is its package management. When I tried to install updates they failed to install displaying different errors in individual cases. Then I had to go to its IRC or forums to find a solution.

I also found their repositories to be very unreliable. They remain down very often.

In manjaro I would prefer to use the terminal to update and install stuffs than to use pacmac or octopie. Yaourt is really easy to use and it gives you more info than needed.

[monkeybrain20122]

If someone held a gun to my head, it would be a hard choice between Fedora and Ubuntu.

For me the choice is easy, definitely Ubuntu. I triple boot three linux distros and Fedora is my second system. I like it, but for many things Ubuntu is just so much smoother out of the box. I was trying to get a second compiler and switch between it and the default, in Ubuntu it is so easy (sudo apt-get install and then update-alternatives or use galternatives to switch) In Fedora is is a bloody pain, first have to build it from source (with numerous errors along the way) and then use some obscure script to make the system aware of the second compiler and have to switch at compile time.

My experience of getting gcc 4.4 pretty much sums up my feeling of Fedora vs Ubuntu. Pros: In general much more up to date software in Fedora Cons: limited choices in comparison and it is a lot more hassles to do things outside normal use case in Fedora, it takes more tweakings to get in working shape. The package manager sucks, first thing I do in any Fedora installation would be to remove Packagekit (or it runs in the background ALL THE TIME) and install yumex, but Yumex is still no match for synaptic (or phonon if you use Kubuntu)

And oh selinux is a pain. I don't feel like having to read the long documentation in order and create a syslinux profile to start using the system so I just set it to permissive mode, otherwise it pretty much blocks everything from running. I am not running a server, I am not CIA, I don't need that kind of over zealous security.

So in conclusion Fedora is good for specific purposes but as a general desktop OS it is too inflexible comparing to Ubuntu

[linuxyogi]

I am paranoid about security so I tried Qubes OS once but unfortunately it didn't detect my NIC card.

http://qubes-os.org/trac (http://qubes-os.org/trac)

Unfortunately they dont maintain an IRC channel. I havent checked if they have a forum.

Its the idea that attracts me.

http://www.rationallyparanoid.com/articles/qubes.html

[Linuxratty]

I usually just use Ubuntu, but I have used fedora in the past and liked it a good bit.

[ajbozdar]

I triple boot three linux distros and Fedora is my second system. So in conclusion Fedora is good for specific purposes but as a general desktop OS it is too inflexible comparing to Ubuntu

I'd like to know how do you triple boot three Linux distros, without losing smoothness. Is it also possible to triple boot having windows as triple? I can't agree more that Ubuntu is the best for family use, but professionally Fedora hits the Ubuntu hard. Fedora is much more productive. Ubuntu mission is to replace Windows. If you talk about errors, and compiler problems then we never left Windows if we never had any problem there. :)

Thanks.

[Hodevah]

I'd like to know how do you triple boot three Linux distros, without losing smoothness. Is it also possible to triple boot having windows as triple? I can't agree more that Ubuntu is the best for family use, but professionally Fedora hits the Ubuntu hard. Fedora is much more productive. Ubuntu mission is to replace Windows. If you talk about errors, and compiler problems then we never left Windows if we never had any problem there. :) Thanks. Yes, it is possible to triple-boot without Windows. I have 5 linux distros on my hard drive. I could have kept my prior Windows install but I wanted to completely remove myself from Windows and some of the headaches it brings. Just my 2 cents.

[Allavona]

Fedora 20 is sweet, very solid and the Gnome 3 presentation is one of the best.

He mentions Linux Lite, and that he didn't get a chance this year to review it. Its a shame too, because I'd like to hear what he has to say about it.
I found it to be solid, but a bit too friendly for my tastes.
It sports a XFCE desktop and comes with the usual Ubuntu compliment of software, Firefox, etc.

[monkeybrain20122]

I'd like to know how do you triple boot three Linux distros, without losing smoothness. Is it also possible to triple boot having windows as triple? I can't agree more that Ubuntu is the best for family use, but professionally Fedora hits the Ubuntu hard. Fedora is much more productive. Ubuntu mission is to replace Windows. If you talk about errors, and compiler problems then we never left Windows if we never had any problem there. :)

Thanks.

Triple boot is easy without Windows. :) Just make sure that you let one distro control grub. I use Ubuntu for that, then when you install other distros, choose "manual" or "advanced" something like that, and either do not install bootloader or install it into partition instead of the drive (say /dev/sda2 instead of /dev/sda) . Also when you have a kernel update in one of the distros, always log into the one that controls grub afterwards to update grub.(I think if Fedora is one of the distros which does not control grub you have the additional work to have to update grub in it as well, if I just update grub in Ubuntu, then all the Fedora kernels will be picked up at boot, but may be in the wrong order)

I don't find any loose of speed and smoothness, all are good. (Triple boot is nothing, I remember one guy on this forum claimed he had 8 or 9 distros multibooting in the same drive. :))

The only distro I have had problem with in such a setup is OpenSuse, it seems that if can be done it must be the first to install and control grub, but somebody claimed to be able to install it after Ubuntu, so I have to look into it again.

With Windows I don't know, have not had any Windows for a long time except in VB for one program. :)

I am not sure if Fedora is 'much more productive', that depends on the particular professional usage I would think.

In my example I wasn't talking about compiler error, I was talking about errors when compiling the compiler, that is a gcc issue rather than a Fedora issue, after applying some patches I was able to get it working. The point is I don't have to compile it in Ubuntu and I can switch between several versions very easily. In Fedora I have to compile it and manually switch at compile time. In the end I have both compilers working in both distros but had to do a lot more work to achieve the same end in Fedoa, so not sure how Fedora is more productive. :)

[monkeybrain20122]

Fedora 20 is sweet, very solid and the Gnome 3 presentation is one of the best.



There was some problem with the Nvidia driver, akmod didn't build the module and I ended up with black screen(so needed to install kmod as well). Maybe it is fixed by now.

Many gnome-shell extensions no longer work. Notably the edge flipping one that I use a lot. My problem with gnome-shell is everything is controlled by the same activity corner while the edges are completely useless. So no matter where you are you always have to reach for the same corner even when it may be far way. Because of this I find gnome-shell kind of awkward and constricting comparing to Unity,--with the appropriate compiz plugins enabled,- for multitasking.

Fedora 19 just got updated to kernel 3.12.5, I see no reason to upgrade to F20 at the moment and many reasons not to (the loss of extensions and the loss of my customization, like I can no longer place the buttons on the left with Nautilus and faenza icons are removed from the repo)

[buzzingrobot]

...first thing I do in any Fedora installation would be to remove Packagekit (or it runs in the background ALL THE TIME) and install yumex...

I've seen packagekit run for some time on the first boot after an install but never all the time. Yumex is annoying because it wants to refresh itself so often. I prefer Packages, which is gnome-packagekit or something similar in the repos, when I don't use yum.


And oh selinux is a pain. I don't feel like having to read the long documentation in order and create a syslinux profile to start using the system so I just set it to permissive mode, otherwise it pretty much blocks everything from running. I am not running a server, I am not CIA, I don't need that kind of over zealous security.


I used to set it to permissive, but I haven't touched a thing in F19 and F20 installs and it's been perfectly quiet. And, it takes only a quick edit to turn it off altogether.

koji.fedoraproject.org is a good resource for packages that aren't in the official repos.

Fedora and Ubuntu clearly target two distinct audiences, with Ubuntu looking for Windows migrants while Fedora seems built for a knowledgable enterprise user/admin interested in the new tech it rolls out. Gnome 3.10 on F20, though, is a really nice desktop experience. Gnome fans should take a good luck.

[monkeybrain20122]

Fedora and Ubuntu clearly target two distinct audiences, with Ubuntu looking for Windows migrants while Fedora seems built for a knowledgable enterprise user/admin interested in the new tech it rolls out. Gnome 3.10 on F20, though, is a really nice desktop experience. Gnome fans should take a good luck.

I am not trying to be argumentative, but genuinely curious since I am using both and exploring Fedora in particular. It is true that a lot of system admin types use Redhat/Centos (not really Fedora as it has too short a support cycle), but I am not sure if there is anything that you can only do in Redhat type systems but not with Debian derivatives (such as Ubuntu) or the Redhat way is vastly superior. I can think of some very specialized proprietary software that supports only Redhat (SAS and Revolutionary R) but those are very specialized and rare.

In fact I was talking to a friend just a couple of weeks ago, he is a system admin and has a strong preference for Redhat/Fedora/Centos, but couldn't really tell me why and I have the impression that he doesn't know Debian type systems that well (e.g he said that in Redhat/Fedora it is really easy to install software with yum which pulls in all the dependencies and debian can't do that, which is wrong of course)

[buzzingrobot]

It is true that a lot of system admin types use Redhat/Centos (not really Fedora as it has too short a support cycle), but I am not sure if there is anything that you can only do in Redhat type systems but not with Debian derivatives (such as Ubuntu) or the Redhat way is vastly superior.

It's my impression that the very long support lifetime for RHEL combined with its feature list is very attractive to enterprise admins and the people who pay them (who are the ones that count). They can lock into one OS and one support path (via Red Hat) for years, knowing they'll get bug and security patches backported into the kernel and the apps, and new enterprise features every time there's a point release. Plus Red Hat provides indemnification in case of IP/copyright conflicts related to its code,which is something of concern to organizations buying into FOSS use.

Fedora does, in fact, debut a lot of new tech, most of which is of no interest to a desktop user but probably does interest Red Hat a great deal. Using it as a mainline OS to support something you need to depend on, though, seems inappropriate. Too much churn, if nothing else. Admins and their bosses don't like churn; they like things that don't change.

From a business and corporate point of view, Red Hat's advantage over Debian is that it's also a business and a corporate. It lives in their world, while Debian doesn't.

(I expect I'll give a good look at RHEL 7 when it's available as CentOS 7, which seems likely in several months. I ran CentOS 6 for a long time and finally put it out to pasture when it's creaking GTK version couldn't support the apps I use.)

[monkeybrain20122]

It's my impression that the very long support lifetime for RHEL combined with its feature list is very attractive to enterprise admins and the people who pay them (who are the ones that count). They can lock into one OS and one support path (via Red Hat) for years, knowing they'll get bug and security patches backported into the kernel and the apps, and new enterprise features every time there's a point release. Plus Red Hat provides indemnification in case of IP/copyright conflicts related to its code,which is something of concern to organizations buying into FOSS use.


So it is more about the support package rather than the OS itself. Maybe to compare apple with apple we should compare Debian with Centos or Ubuntu entreprise support with RHEL's.