Looking to Replace Ubuntu 13.10 with other Distros

[monkeybrain20122]

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

Except for Unity.

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.)

Actually Manjaro is not as bleeding edge as Arch, things sit in Arch repos for a while before they become available in Manjaro (I hope with the exception of security patches, this is a criticism against Mint, I will look into that). I find most software in my Manjaro install to be older than their counterparts in Fedora (just normal updates, not rawhide)

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.

Agree. Fedora is quite fascinating in that it somehow manages to deliver the bleeding edge while still very stable. It is a lot more stable and polished than Debian Sid in my experience and newer packages too. Sorry, IMO Sid is only 'bleeding' in the sense that it is a bloody mess,--got broken dependencies almost every update,--not in the sense of cutting edge.

[swhit3]

Hmm I'm thinking perhaps I might try dual booting Fedora and Manjaro and wait it out for those two until the release of 14.04 which I hope will be rock solid.

[rousseau09]

Maybe try Kali Linux (based on Debian). It's a pentest distro but I've found it really stable for my usage.
http://www.kali.org/
I also maintain a small website to help and support Kali. Might try it as well http://www.blackmoreops.com/
Hope that helps in your search of finding an alternate.

Note: You might want to try Kali in a VBox first. Kali doesn't like USB method too much, requires some skills. But then again, if you've used Ubuntu for few years, that won't be a problem.

[BBQdave]

As offered by others... Ubuntu Unity 12.04LTS (smooth and stable, and you have through 2017).

I would also offer that Fedora 20 beta with Gnome 3 is incredibly stable, and Gnome 3 has finally arrived with nice polish and function.

Be careful though, I gave F20-beta Gnome 3 a test spin, and now it is my daily driver

[swhit3]

Hmmm Fedora 20 with Gnome 3.10 does look pretty interesting, but not sure how stable it will be when it's released or how much of a learning curve it is from Ubuntu

[mips]

My vote goes to Manjaro

[r-senior]

I switched to Fedora (Gnome) for a while and enjoyed it.

Things I had to spend time adjusting to:

a. Fonts: I found the rendering poor but there are guides to set it up with the Ubuntu font and rendering settings.
b. Yum: A different beast from apt, which takes some getting used to. I found the GUI (PackageKit?) less than good.
c. Package breakages: Not many but more than with apt.
d. Ran into some problems with SELinux and ended up disabling it IIRC

Fedora implements the free software ethos more strictly than Ubuntu and I resorted to RPMFusion for some things that I can't remember but probably media stuff.

The forums are pretty good, quieter than here but plenty of help if you need it. I still lurk over there and post from time to time. I think I joined the forum at a bad time because there were a few flame wars and bans in the first week I subscribed. It doesn't have the same sort of CoC as this forum and things can get out of hand. Expect some Ubuntu bashing too.

It was certainly stable enough despite the bleeding edge reputation and not really more difficult, just different.

I've got a couple of other things running in VMs that I would consider for my desktop. OpenSUSE is looking nice these days but I suspect it would be another learning curve with Yast. Elementary OS is a nice minimal option and I'm interested to see what they come up with for their release next year.

[swhit3]

Installed 12.04, got tired of it within an hour, so installed the latest Manjaro build. Other than my function keys not working, every thing has worked right out of the box. It's basic, slick, and fast. Don't know if I'll stick with it for too long, Fedora 20 comes out in a week or so and I'm very tempted to give it a try!

[monkeybrain20122]

I've got a couple of other things running in VMs that I would consider for my desktop. OpenSUSE is looking nice these days but I suspect it would be another learning curve with Yast. Elementary OS is a nice minimal option and I'm interested to see what they come up with for their release next year.

I don't think OpenSuse likes dualboot except with Windows. I had tried to set it up as a triple boot with Ubuntu and Fedora but it never worked because the installer insisted that I already have a / partition and refused to make another one (Hello? Of course I already have a /, it is a dual boot) and then the screen for installing grub is so confusing that I don't even know if there is an option to choose where to install it.

Fedora since 18/19 seems to have removed the option to not to install grub, so now I have to always reinstall grub into Ubuntu's partition after installing Fedora. It is also peculiar of Fedora 19 that if I clone it and restore it on another hard drive it won't even boot, have to boot into rescue mode to run drcut something. I have no such issue with debian based distros and Manjaro (or Fedora 18) Fedora by and large is stable and good but from time to time there are gottchas, I agree that selinux can be a pain.

[kevdog]

Ubuntu is great -- it really is. But on the other hand its a very nice life experience to really try out other distros and learn things that are non-Debian based as well. It really broadens your horizons -- if you have time for all the shananagins of course.