What Linux distrobution are you using?

[JesseRaymondBassett]

Hey all to my fellow linux users,
Just wondering which distrobution y'all primarily use and why you use it? Is there a particular reason why you chose it over the others?

Note-I am not using Linux anymore, so please do not be offended by the fact I started this topic with the above. I had linux on my desktop at the time. Thanks!

 

[Monna]

If and when I use Linux I generally use Ubuntu ... because
... when I first got into Linux, it was the most user-friendly distro I could find with apps that I wanted - and I was/am not a computer nerd, so I was looking for something that didn't have a steep learning curve
... I happened to be surrounded by the ubunto philosophy in my growing up years - without knowing it was called that (!) and it just seemed to chime with me...
... I have tried to follow linux distro developments, and a variety of versions, but generally have come back to Ubuntu. As I am not a nerd whose primary interest is the OS itself, but someone who wants a distro that is practical and familiar, this seemed a good choice.

I am not opposed to trying something different it is were to prove itself easier.

 

[JesseRaymondBassett]

I have used Freespire OS before. They have a windows 7 friendly interface and you can google freespire 6 for more information

 

[Jesse Johnson]

I must have tried Linux a dozen times since Windows 95. I wanted to love it, but it just didn't work for me. Then Windows 10 came along and I started doing everything on my phone. I kept a Windows 8 tablet for desperate situations. Came into a little money and bought the wife and myself matching 17" laptops from Dell. Windows 10 kept freezing and it wouldn't run Windows 7 so:

MX Linux w/KDE. KDE is buggy, but pretty. And MX just works. It's like the Energizer bunny. It just keeps on going, and going, and going... And you can't beat its package manager. It's called, simply, "MX Package Installer," if that tells you anything about it. I used Xubuntu for a while. I liked it but it kept on borking on me. And I'm not too crazy about Canonical's increasingly "evil" business model. I like Manjaro (especially the easy kernel management) but it's got elitist Arch under the hood so there's always software that you have to either do without or convert from tar or compile yourself. I think I've pretty much settled on a pure Debian for a base (hold the Ubuntu layer, please). The only thing I dislike about Linux is that so much of the software is developed specific desktops like Gnome and KDE (at least, before I switched from XFCE). Gnome feels too much like Android to me. And Android's nice on a phone, but I don't want it on my desktop/laptop. Too bad I half to carry most of its libraries to run half of my software.

 

[charsan]

I use Elementary OS (EOS) on the laptop that I take to work which I am typing on presently and Linux Mint on my other laptop. I really like EOS and have come back to it many times, I use Linux Mint on my home laptop because I haven't changed it back to EOS yet

 

[JesseRaymondBassett]

Update for everyone-I am sticking with Linux Mint. It is the best system for my desktop. I know I said Windows was, but I cant reinstall it for some stupid reason. So I am stuck with mint.

 

[Wookiee]

Proxmox (Debian-base) to virtualise stuff, and Debian for all my (virtualised) servers. It's light and reliable.

 

[JesseRaymondBassett]

Update-Was able to reinstall Windows 10 using Woe-USB iso program on Linux Mint. Whew! NOW....I will not mess with my desktop. If it is not broke, I will NOT fix it!

 

[Jesse Johnson]

Update-Was able to reinstall Windows 10 using Woe-USB iso program on Linux Mint. Whew! NOW....I will not mess with my desktop. If it is not broke, I will NOT fix it!

How about that? Linux was able to facilitate your re-installation of Windows 10, which you were unable to do otherwise.

 

[Jesse Johnson]

As I said before, I can't run Windows 7 on my new laptop.
But I can run it on a virtual machine inside Linux on my new laptop.
That's kind of a sad commentary on the state of non-open sourse OSs.

 

[Wookiee]

As I said before, I can't run Windows 7 on my new laptop.
But I can run it on a virtual machine inside Linux on my new laptop.
That's kind of a sad commentary on the state of non-open sourse OSs.

Kind of sad commentary on hardware manufacturers not providing drivers for them. AMD Ryzen and Intel after a certain generation don't provide driver support for anything older than Windows 10.

 

[Jesse Johnson]

Kind of sad commentary on hardware manufacturers not providing drivers for them. AMD Ryzen and Intel after a certain generation don't provide driver support for anything older than Windows 10.

They're all in cahoots.

 

[JesseRaymondBassett]

How about that? Linux was able to facilitate your re-installation of Windows 10, which you were unable to do otherwise.

Jesse,
I spent four hours trying to find a program that would fully burn the Windows 10 ISO image onto my usb yesterday. Linux might be good, but its not perfect. Mind you neither is windows, but at least with Windows you have predictability and stability. And more options for things like that. Have a blessed day!

 

[Jesse Johnson]

Jesse,
I spent four hours trying to find a program that would fully burn the Windows 10 ISO image onto my usb yesterday. Linux might be good, but its not perfect. Mind you neither is windows, but at least with Windows you have predictability and stability. And more options for things like that. Have a blessed day!

I can't help but notice the strange irony that you started out your OP with "Hey all to my fellow Linux users." I kinda feel like I've been had. Was it a gag?

 

[JesseRaymondBassett]

No. I had used Linux, but my college needs Windows for me to be apart of it. That was why I was experimenting trying to see if I could survive without it, but I cant. So to answer your question, no you were not had. It was the issue with my college.

 

[JesseRaymondBassett]

Not to mention, Linux was just too dang complicated on my desktop to work right....

 

[Jesse Johnson]

Not to mention, Linux was just too dang complicated on my desktop to work right....

If you need Windoze, you need Windoze. I'm just glad I don't. You can dual-boot. I have 3 different installations of Linux on my laptop. One for work, one for play, and one for sysadmin. Linux only seems complicated because it is versatile by design. It was intended from its inception to give the end user complete control over their computer's operation. Mixing that with user-friendly characteristics is no mean feat but is becoming more prevalent literally every day. Again, if your school or workplace requires you to use Windows, there's really no getting around that unless you're willing to spend some time learning how to set up a virtual machine. And even then, almost no one runs Windows 10 in a VM, so peer support would be slim. Generally speaking, anything Windows 10 can do, a Windows 7 VM can do better, unless it's software that just won't run on Win 7 at all. But you're probably better off like you are or using dual-boot in your situation. College is probably not the best place to tackle Linux unless you're highly motivated to do so or you're majoring in computer science or some such thing.

 

[Jesse Johnson]

I spent four hours trying to find a program that would fully burn the Windows 10 ISO image onto my usb yesterday.

——————————————
sudo umount /dev/sdb1

sudo dd if=~/Downlods/windows 10.iso of=/dev/sdb
——————————————

That's what your program did for you.
Two simple shell commands

 

[paul1149]

.I will not mess with my desktop. If it is not broke, I will NOT fix it!

Many a system breaks down without the slightest provocation from the user. No one is 100% secure. The real lesson is to have a full system backup (that is, a disk image) and a recent data backup, at all times.

 

[Jesse Johnson]

Many a system breaks down without the slightest provocation from the user. No one is 100% secure. The real lesson is to have a full system backup (that is, a disk image) and a recent data backup, at all times.

I think this is a lesson almost no one (including and maybe even especially me--considering I've been well aware of it for over thirty years) takes seriously enough. I (somewhat) recently accidentally scrubbed a 2 terabyte external USB drive full of data and it was a nightmare recovering what little of it I could. The filenames were all lost and many of the files were corrupt. The utility I used was able to recover the filename extensions, but because OSs use so many text files it was practically impossible to find any of my lost documents. I didn't lose any vitally important files, thankfully. I keep multiple copies of those types of things.

To be fair, though, with Linux almost 99.9% of my problems have been my own fault, especially if you include ignorance and/or laziness. With Windows, probably closer to 50%. I realize I've crossed over into fanboy territory here but I can't seem to shake the notion that Linux gives the user so much more control than commercial OSs (albeit with a much steeper learning curve). Alas, with much control comes much responsibility, eh?

Another good idea (if you're not overly concerned with privacy) is taking advantage of the various free cloud services available nowadays. Google and Firefox have been very good to me, however invasive they may be.