Try Linux Thread

[Willtor]

I usually can't stand looking at the ui design of a Linux distro, but then OS X Yosemite happened, so now I have to live with the design of Linux distro, lol.

No, but really: I've replaced Windows XP on my dad's really old PC that he doesn't use with Xubuntu since XP is no longer supported, and when I was watching cable with WinTV (before Dishanywhere), I installed Mythbuntu onto a vm in Vmware Fusion so I could watch and DVR cable.

I've just moved away from Elementary OS, which is the first desktop I've ever used that I thought was more friendly than Mac OS. There are a couple of rough edges, but it's simple and elegant. I can't say enough good things about it -- the team that develops it really understands UI principles.

The catch: It's based on Ubuntu 12.04. My research needs bleeding-edge stuff, and sometimes there just isn't a PPA. With great sadness, I've had to go back to Ubuntu. But if you don't need the latest LaTeX, GCC, kernel, etc., and if you're willing to take the advice of some random guy on teh intarwebs, give Elementary a try. It's boss.

 

[C-Man]

If it's bleeding-edge stuff you're after, Fedora might be a good bet.

 

[Willtor]

If it's bleeding-edge stuff you're after, Fedora might be a good bet.

When I say, "bleeding edge," I don't actually need that. Basically, I need GCC and the kernel to know about transactional memory instructions, and I need a LaTeX and OCaml compiler that are less than 3 years old. It would also be nice not to see the regular "this is fixed in 13.10 -- we're not backporting the fix" when there's a bug.

I haven't looked at Fedora in 5+ years. I might look there if I were going to leave the Debian/Ubuntu ecosystem. I also have a friend who swears by Arch and is trying to get me to convert. That's pretty hardcore, though.

 

[Qyöt27]

When I say, "bleeding edge," I don't actually need that. Basically, I need GCC and the kernel to know about transactional memory instructions, and I need a LaTeX and OCaml compiler that are less than 3 years old. It would also be nice not to see the regular "this is fixed in 13.10 -- we're not backporting the fix" when there's a bug.

I haven't looked at Fedora in 5+ years. I might look there if I were going to leave the Debian/Ubuntu ecosystem. I also have a friend who swears by Arch and is trying to get me to convert. That's pretty hardcore, though.

My first choice if I were to go with a power distro would probably be Arch (or do something exotic for the heck of it, like the Hurd variant). I have a bit of familiarity with pacman because it was ported to Windows for use with msys2.

I'm still perfectly content with Ubuntu, though. Where the utility of other distros would come in is if I have to run compilation tests (and at that point, the kernel itself matters more than the distro - most given Linux distributions would likely work without hiccups, it's the BSDs, Hurd, Haiku, etc., that would need the attention). There's a pretty good chance that if AviSynth+ development revives, I'd be the one having to do those tests. I'm still working on getting the SIMD intrinsics split up so GCC doesn't choke - and the real fun part, trying to get CMake to apply the mflags on a per-file basis.

 

[Willtor]

My first choice if I were to go with a power distro would probably be Arch (or do something exotic for the heck of it, like the Hurd variant). I have a bit of familiarity with pacman because it was ported to Windows for use with msys2.

I'm still perfectly content with Ubuntu, though. Where the utility of other distros would come in is if I have to run compilation tests (and at that point, the kernel itself matters more than the distro - most given Linux distributions would likely work without hiccups, it's the BSDs, Hurd, Haiku, etc., that would need the attention). There's a pretty good chance that if AviSynth+ development revives, I'd be the one having to do those tests. I'm still working on getting the SIMD intrinsics split up so GCC doesn't choke - and the real fun part, trying to get CMake to apply the mflags on a per-file basis.

My (aforementioned) friend has a saying:

Ubuntu is for people who are afraid of configuring Debian.
Debian is for people who are afraid of bootstrapping Arch.
Arch is for people who are afraid of compiling Gentoo.

I love to play with a distro and I wish there were more time to do it. Ubuntu has the right balance for me. I'll try Arch in a VM at some point. Even if I don't get hooked, I'm sure I'll at least learn a lot about packages I use and their dependencies.

 

[EphesiaNZ]

My (aforementioned) friend has a saying:

Ubuntu is for people who are afraid of configuring Debian.
Debian is for people who are afraid of bootstrapping Arch.
Arch is for people who are afraid of compiling Gentoo.

Or we could say,

Ubuntu is for people who don't want to spend days configuring Debian.
Debian is for people who don't want to %^T%$$$$$ bootstrapping Arch.
Arch is for people who don't want to spend weeks compiling Gentoo.
Gentoo is for people that should be using BSD

It's all Linux at the end of the day. Ubuntu suits n00bs and those that just want things to work will minimal effort. Debian gives the user more control over what they want to do, compared to Ubuntu. Arch is for bleeding edge dudes that like to brag and Gentoo is old school (like slackware) Linux in 2015.

Interestingly enough, Google's Chrome is/was based off Gentoo.

 

[Willtor]

Or we could say,

Ubuntu is for people who don't want to spend days configuring Debian.
Debian is for people who don't want to %^T%$$$$$ bootstrapping Arch.
Arch is for people who don't want to spend weeks compiling Gentoo.
Gentoo is for people that should be using BSD

It's all Linux at the end of the day. Ubuntu suits n00bs and those that just want things to work will minimal effort. Debian gives the user more control over what they want to do, compared to Ubuntu. Arch is for bleeding edge dudes that like to brag and Gentoo is old school (like slackware) Linux in 2015.

Interestingly enough, Google's Chrome is/was based off Gentoo.

They all have their place. Having been raised on the Mac, I like easy stuff. That's not to say I'm averse to a steep learning curve -- merely, the curve has to represent a trade-off of learnability for efficiency. Ubuntu's Unity interface has neither. Thus, my predicament.

A bunch of my labmates have persuaded me to try xmonad, which I've been finding incredibly promising for productivity. But when I'm doing right-brained stuff like shuffling through pictures, arting, or gaming, I sometimes just want a simple desktop interface.

Re: Chrome OS: I didn't know that! I've noticed that Google seems to like Linux, but has not been very pro-GNU. Selecting Gentoo as a base supports that.

 

[Qyöt27]

I wouldn't mind Unity as much if I had the CPU and GPU power for it. It also takes a large screen resolution, but I solved that a little over a year ago when I got a nice 1080p IPS-LED monitor.

So I switched to LXDE a few years ago, and will occasionally use MATE if I'm feeling in the mood to be fancy.

 

[C-Man]

Arch with LXDE used to rule big-time. You could practically run it on an abacus. Ever since they switched to systemd the whole thing's been broken and slower than the checkout line at Wal-Mart.

 

[EphesiaNZ]

Ever since they switched to systemd the whole thing's been broken and slower than the checkout line at Wal-Mart.

Ah systemd(own), using it but would rather not - why did Debian steamroller this thing?

It's caused me more than a few headaches and it will cause more in the future. I pretty sure systemd is the beginning of a monolithic Linux build as it is/has (from what I know) going to tie in with things like the Gnome desktop and BTRFS file system.

One good thing is that it's moving a few Linux die hards over to the BSD's which is good news too - “Has Linux lost its way?” comments prompt a Debian developer to revisit FreeBSD after 20 years | The Changelog