What do you think are the Linux distros to watch out for?
October 26, 2008 by Clair Ching
Filed under General
I’ve seen the blog entry about the three Linux distros to look out for. It says Mint Linux, Open Suse and gOS. I have only tried Open Suse once and I think that it might take time getting used to it in case I would decide to switch to it because of the different approach of YAST. Mint is something I’d love to try too.
I suppose people are looking for something more user-friendly and has a good set of drivers and stuff. After all, you won’t always have internet when you install Linux and if you plan to install on netbooks and laptops, it would be great to have drivers so you could use the wifi connection already. And the default apps would be great too if they are up to date. Even those who are new to Linux will not feel too intimated in that case.
Aside from that, I would also think that people would be after the stability of the distro and community support. There’s nothing like a great user experience to make a Linux distro a success. It’s not enough anymore for a few people to have the chance to use it. It must be free to the world as well.
In your opinion, what are the Linux distributions to watch out for?
As far as I’ve overviewed the website of Mint Linux, is that they put alot of effort into ‘looking good’. Does it also work as slick as it looks like? Let me/us know something.
I’m looking out for Ubuntu 8.10, just to test the speed and if it works ‘out of the box’. Then I’ll go back to my beloved Archlinux. Ubuntu 8.10 is just a good excuse to make a fresh install of Archlinux afterwards.
I got started on Linux with SuSE 10 a few years ago. Back then it was not exactly user-friendly. Today it’s amazing. It’s on par with Ubuntu in hardware support and user interface, and the new (as of 11.0) zypper cli for its package management is as easy and comprehensive as apt-get. It’s a great choice (in my opinion better than Ubuntu because of the sheer number of options from the install DVD) for starting Linux users. I don’t support Novell’s general conduct in the world of Linux, but as a distro OpenSuse is great. I think it will become tied with Ubuntu for favorite among new users very soon.
Surely, the one true distro is Debian unstable?
They ignored PCLinuxOS last time and counted it out in 2007. It shot past Ubuntu. I predict the same here. 2009 will be another stellar year for PCLinuxOS.
I would rather go for some BSD derivative, like Desktop BSD or PC-BSD.