38 replies to this topic

[xorangekiller]

jaroli.tamas, on 27 January 2013 - 23:55, said:

Well, first thanks for your answers.
The point is that i'm tired about Ubuntu, and wanna use something other. Btw I already tried MATE, but didnt liked
I use terminal very often, nowadays I even launch Web Browser from terminal by typing chromium-browser
And I know, the best way is experiencing, but I heard about much distros, and now I'm confused.

And about the appearance: my main intent is to remove the panels, and replace them with AWN docks. So thats what I mentioned as "ability to customize desktop".

EDIT:
You mentioned that I described Ubuntu, but I don't agree with this, and here are my justifications:
- Unity and Gnome Shell don't allow me to remove panels, but they have many options to tweak the desktop
- it isn't fast... it's getting slower and slower version by version...
- Less custiomization options about the notification/indicator area without 3rd party program. Also doesnt wanna integrate my skype properly, even though I already tried many tutorials.
-can use xfce4, but can't use Gnome2
-not really power saving. my laptop's accumulator can work for about 1,5 hours, while it can work for 2,5 hours by using Win 8
-boot is slow as hell. Win 8 boots for me in less than 10 sec, Ubuntu boots for about 30 sec (normal 5400rpm hdd)

+ in my last pharagraph, I said I don't wanna use Ubuntu anymore ^^

There are two things about your position I don't quite understand.

First, you are the first - and only - person I have ever heard claim that he prefers GNOME 2 to MATE! Considering that MATE is literally a fork of GNOME 2.32 whose express goal as a project is to maintain the GNOME 2 experience, I don't understand what you like about GNOME 2 that you dislike about MATE. My only guess is that you have only tried MATE on Linux Mint, and dislike the abomination of a menu that Linux Mint added to MATE or the Linux Mint default MATE configuration (which is similarly abysmal in my opinion). If that is your issue, try installing MATE from their repository on a clean install of Ubuntu or Debian. The experience has not changed from GNOME 2; MATE has merely added a few new features and improved some of the unerlying code.

Second, I think you're being unfairly biased against Ubuntu. It sounds like you are confusing the desktop environment with the operating system. While they are tightly coupled - to the point of being nigh inseparable - in Windows and OS X, that is not the case in Linux. Every component can be modified, updated, or removed individually. If you're an advanced user and would prefer to do an expert install of Ubuntu, that is certainly possible with the alternate install disc. Using that method, you can install only the essential packages and build your system from the ground up. (If you have the experience to perform that type of installation, I would normally recommend that you go upstream to Debian, but you would have a more difficult time getting the latest beta versions of WINE and Ubuntu One installed. It certainly can be done, but you would need to have a very good grasp on how the system works.) Even if you would prefer to install Ubuntu from the live disc and simply remove packages or disable startup services manually, that is also a possibility.

Finally, the Arch Wiki and Debian Wiki are both very good resources no matter which distribution you choose. I would highly recommend that you refer to your distribution's wiki, forums, and IRC channel for help (in that order), but you can often find excellent technical documentation that is somewhat distribution agnostic on both of the aforementioned wikis.

[KaoDome]

As an Arch user myself I'll try to address a couple of the points you're looking for so that you know what to expect.

- Ability to customize: here you get what the DM provides you, an Arch base install is not tied to any DM in particular (you don't even have to have an X server installed), so it depends on the DM you want to use. I'm pretty comfortable with Xfce, and I remember that after starting the first time I was even asked if I wanted a default panel configuration or if I'd like with an empty one.

- Good hardware support: I'd say you'd get the same as with other distros more or less, it depends on the kernel version you're running; see next point for more info.

- Ability to install the latest programs: if I recall correctly Arch developers and maintainers believe that if upstream considers something to be stable it is stable (and ends up in the repositories). What that means is that when a new version of a program is out a few days after (sometimes even the same day) you'll find it in the repos. That can be good or bad, as with Gnome 3 for example, but it wasn't just days it took to get to the repos, it took more due to the size of it and having to test it and all.

So the repos are pretty up to date, which for a developer is something quite desirable. There's also the AUR (user repo) where you can find recipes that allow you to build packages that are not maintained in the main repositories (e.g. say you want Cinnamon in Arch, you'd find it there).

- Fast and stable: well.. there are breakages as in all distros I suppose, but they don't happen often. And as long as you don't force a package update things tend to be stable and as fast as you want them to be (within reason). You also have the possibility of compiling the packages yourself should you want to some packages optimized or with different features.

- Good media support: it goes with the packages updates, since they're pretty up to date you're covered there.

- Mail/messaging and integration: this depends on the DM you're using but I bet you can get what you'd like. I don't use a mail application so I wouldn't really know.

- Good for programming: development packages are available and up to date, and should a serious bug be found in an specific package, say GCC it'd be patched without waiting for the next stable release. Note that a mayor change in the toolchain requires more testing and is not available in the repos right away (e.g. GCC 4.7 -> 4.8).

- Of your preferred DMs Gnome 2 is not available in the main repos since Gnome 3 was declared stabled. You could find MATE in the AUR if you were interested though.

- Working Wine: I don't know what you mean by that , but Wine is usually updated to the development releases (not the stable ones), so bugfixes and new features are available promptly.

- Google Chrome / Chromium: Chromium is in the official repositories, updated to match the versions of Chrome. If you'd prefer Chrome it's in the AUR too.

- Easy backup of / + sync + restore: Wouldn't know... never did that, but I'd be interested to know of means to do it. If you know of a way in a distribution changes are it's available in Arch or the AUR.

- Dropbox and Ubuntu One: they're both in the AUR.

Optional points...:

- Nice and helpful community: can't you tell? Nah, seriously though you have the forums and IRC where people is always keen to help. Plus the Wiki is really something to look at when having doubts as already mentioned.

- Updates often: done.

- Power saving: I guess it'd depend on what you install... wouldn't know.

- Compatible with phone / iPod: wouldn't know.

- Fast boot: in my case it's quite fast although it'd depend on your config too. Arch moved to using systemd a while ago if you're interested.

I'm not giving marks to the points, but I hope the info I wrote would help you. To install Arch you have either the official images or Archboot (I like this better, seems to have support for more systems and you get an ncurses install, anyway following the installation guide and the beginner's guide in the wiki you'd have no problem).

Also, even if you don't choose Arch you could find this page useful if you know your way around one distribution's package management and want to switch to another.

[tim_s]

Linux is all about the time you spend into it - most often people forget about how flexible Linux is and this flexibility can be time consuming to setup. Really anything is possible - I would pick the distros who have a mission statment you agree with.

It is hard to have it all without spending a little time or money.

I have gone through many distros before settling on Gentoo but outside of waiting for a GUI to compile I do not have many complaints. --- nothing is perfect.

[jaroli.tamas]

xorangekiller, on 28 January 2013 - 01:03, said:

There are two things about your position I don't quite understand.

First, you are the first - and only - person I have ever heard claim that he prefers GNOME 2 to MATE! Considering that MATE is literally a fork of GNOME 2.32 whose express goal as a project is to maintain the GNOME 2 experience, I don't understand what you like about GNOME 2 that you dislike about MATE. My only guess is that you have only tried MATE on Linux Mint, and dislike the abomination of a menu that Linux Mint added to MATE or the Linux Mint default MATE configuration (which is similarly abysmal in my opinion). If that is your issue, try installing MATE from their repository on a clean install of Ubuntu or Debian. The experience has not changed from GNOME 2; MATE has merely added a few new features and improved some of the unerlying code.

Second, I think you're being unfairly biased against Ubuntu. It sounds like you are confusing the desktop environment with the operating system. While they are tightly coupled - to the point of being nigh inseparable - in Windows and OS X, that is not the case in Linux. Every component can be modified, updated, or removed individually. If you're an advanced user and would prefer to do an expert install of Ubuntu, that is certainly possible with the alternate install disc. Using that method, you can install only the essential packages and build your system from the ground up. (If you have the experience to perform that type of installation, I would normally recommend that you go upstream to Debian, but you would have a more difficult time getting the latest beta versions of WINE and Ubuntu One installed. It certainly can be done, but you would need to have a very good grasp on how the system works.) Even if you would prefer to install Ubuntu from the live disc and simply remove packages or disable startup services manually, that is also a possibility.

Finally, the Arch Wiki and Debian Wiki are both very good resources no matter which distribution you choose. I would highly recommend that you refer to your distribution's wiki, forums, and IRC channel for help (in that order), but you can often find excellent technical documentation that is somewhat distribution agnostic on both of the aforementioned wikis.

I have tried MATE on Ubuntu too, but it also had that ugly Menu, but you are right, I used it with the default config. I'm not confusing them, I'm just really bored the slowness and the new developements of Ubuntu, that's all. Of course I'm talking about Unity and GS. With XFCE4, it works like a dream, really fast. But I would like to get some experiences with another "professional" distros, like Arch, and others. And yeah, maybe I can say, I'm an advanced user, but not expert So doing an expert install may would be a little hard
About Debian, I don't like that it has "old" and "outdated" packages.
After reading your posts, I think, desktop environment "doesn't mention", if the OS supports xfce (or gnome or mate), I can easily config to my needs.
The good new is it started to brighten what distro should I chose. This Arch seems interesting, or maybe stay at Xubuntu.
By the way, what do you think about Frugalware?

KaoDome said:

As an Arch user myself I'll try to address a couple of the points you're looking for so that you know what to expect.

- Ability to customize: here you get what the DM provides you, an Arch base install is not tied to any DM in particular (you don't even have to have an X server installed), so it depends on the DM you want to use. I'm pretty comfortable with Xfce, and I remember that after starting the first time I was even asked if I wanted a default panel configuration or if I'd like with an empty one.

- Good hardware support: I'd say you'd get the same as with other distros more or less, it depends on the kernel version you're running; see next point for more info.

- Ability to install the latest programs: if I recall correctly Arch developers and maintainers believe that if upstream considers something to be stable it is stable (and ends up in the repositories). What that means is that when a new version of a program is out a few days after (sometimes even the same day) you'll find it in the repos. That can be good or bad, as with Gnome 3 for example, but it wasn't just days it took to get to the repos, it took more due to the size of it and having to test it and all.

So the repos are pretty up to date, which for a developer is something quite desirable. There's also the AUR (user repo) where you can find recipes that allow you to build packages that are not maintained in the main repositories (e.g. say you want Cinnamon in Arch, you'd find it there).

- Fast and stable: well.. there are breakages as in all distros I suppose, but they don't happen often. And as long as you don't force a package update things tend to be stable and as fast as you want them to be (within reason). You also have the possibility of compiling the packages yourself should you want to some packages optimized or with different features.

- Good media support: it goes with the packages updates, since they're pretty up to date you're covered there.

- Mail/messaging and integration: this depends on the DM you're using but I bet you can get what you'd like. I don't use a mail application so I wouldn't really know.

- Good for programming: development packages are available and up to date, and should a serious bug be found in an specific package, say GCC it'd be patched without waiting for the next stable release. Note that a mayor change in the toolchain requires more testing and is not available in the repos right away (e.g. GCC 4.7 -> 4.8).

- Of your preferred DMs Gnome 2 is not available in the main repos since Gnome 3 was declared stabled. You could find MATE in the AUR if you were interested though.

- Working Wine: I don't know what you mean by that , but Wine is usually updated to the development releases (not the stable ones), so bugfixes and new features are available promptly.

- Google Chrome / Chromium: Chromium is in the official repositories, updated to match the versions of Chrome. If you'd prefer Chrome it's in the AUR too.

- Easy backup of / + sync + restore: Wouldn't know... never did that, but I'd be interested to know of means to do it. If you know of a way in a distribution changes are it's available in Arch or the AUR.

- Dropbox and Ubuntu One: they're both in the AUR.

Optional points...:

- Nice and helpful community: can't you tell? Nah, seriously though you have the forums and IRC where people is always keen to help. Plus the Wiki is really something to look at when having doubts as already mentioned.

- Updates often: done.

- Power saving: I guess it'd depend on what you install... wouldn't know.

- Compatible with phone / iPod: wouldn't know.

- Fast boot: in my case it's quite fast although it'd depend on your config too. Arch moved to using systemd a while ago if you're interested.

I'm not giving marks to the points, but I hope the info I wrote would help you. To install Arch you have either the official images or Archboot (I like this better, seems to have support for more systems and you get an ncurses install, anyway following the installation guide and the beginner's guide in the wiki you'd have no problem).

Also, even if you don't choose Arch you could find this page useful if you know your way around one distribution's package management and want to switch to another.

Thank you, your post was very helpful, this kind of suggestions are what I'm waiting for ^^ I think, first I will try Arch in VBox, with xfce or MATE. The only fustrating thing is the pacman for me But I doubt it can be hard.

tim_s said:

Linux is all about the time you spend into it - most often people forget about how flexible Linux is and this flexibility can be time consuming to setup. Really anything is possible - I would pick the distros who have a mission statment you agree with.

It is hard to have it all without spending a little time or money.




I have gone through many distros before settling on Gentoo but outside of waiting for a GUI to compile I do not have many complaints. --- nothing is perfect.

Yes, I know its about the time I spend into in. But to be honest, I never did any serious changes, and configs in Linux yet. So this could be a new kind of challange for me. I just wanted to know about the distros stability, but maybe I made my question misunderstandable

[Max Norris]

jaroli.tamas, on 28 January 2013 - 12:36, said:

About Debian, I don't like that it has "old" and "outdated" packages.

Switch out of the stable branch, hop over to testing or Sid.

jaroli.tamas, on 28 January 2013 - 12:36, said:

The only fustrating thing is the pacman for me But I doubt it can be hard.

Not hard, just different. It's actually quite good once you wrap your head around how it works. Even better when you throw yaourt into the mix.

[+Brando212]

Max Norris, on 28 January 2013 - 12:55, said:

Not hard, just different. It's actually quite good once you wrap your head around how it works. Even better when you throw yaourt into the mix.

was just about to say the same thing
plus once you get your DE up and running you can install a front end if you choose https://wiki.archlin...n_GUI_Frontends
(btw just so OP isn't confused, yaourt is an extension of pacman that you can install from AUR that allows future easier installation of AUR packages along with installation of normal pacman packages https://wiki.archlin...ndex.php/Yaourt)

[Haggis]

I tried arch again last night on a VM

followed the wiki through installed system, file system etc etc

got to the ok thats it done now reboot, i rebooted and now my network does not work lol

still working on it though

[jaroli.tamas]

I will give a chance to Arch What DE do you suggest for it?

@Haggis: please let us know if you managed to make the network work!

[Tyler R.]

jaroli.tamas, on 28 January 2013 - 16:31, said:

I will give a chance to Arch What DE do you suggest for it?

Give Kubuntu a try. It has everything you want--easy to install, easy to get new packages from the software center, easy to get new themes and install them, easy to get proprietary drivers. For me personally, it's the best distro. You may also want to refer to this tweak guide. Are you going to be dual booting?

Edit: Oh and if you have issues with your boot screen, refer to this: http://jechem.blogsp...-ubuntu-on.html

Just change the commands gksu and gedit to sudo and kate.

[jaroli.tamas]

@up Thanks, but I already tried, and had issues with my laptop's function keys. Also I don't like KDE ^^
Atm I have dual boot, but I wanna delete Windows, and use only Linux.

[tim_s]

Are you looking for a new experience?

Nothing is easier than Ubuntu / Mint in my opinion and thus if you want anything beyond this - you will need to get comfortable with the operating system. IF this is a work environment - than stick with Ubuntu as your demands for keeping the system stable / ability to return faults back into a running state do not get any easier.

The next level in my opinion will be as follows,

(Remember this is purely opinion and thus people will disagree or you may not have the same experiences)

Fedora

Great for an out of the box solution, the applications are comparable to Ubuntu in the fact all major applications are supported (Typically!) but it is a little more cutting edge and thus you have opportunities for issues. I have never had any issues repairing items as they are thrown my way.

Slackware

Great for fast deployment, as flexible as Fedora and the others but more "In your face" as you will need a little partition knowledge to get you through the setup. Once beyond this, the system will be up and running and rock solid. You may get hung-up on the lack of dependency checking during application installation but it will give you control. This could be a good choice if you are looking for the "Linux" experience.

Arch

I am a moderate fan of Arch, I believe in the project and I love how it is implemented. You will need some basic knowledge about Kernal modules and partitioning - You will see basic speed improvements and packages come per-compiled optimized for 64-bit machines. You will need to go through the process of setting up a graphical environment which may require you to read some information but the documentation is amazing.

I personally would not use a rolling distro in a work environment if your machine is mission critical.

Suse

This is the only distro in the list where I have had over 2 years experience. It's not for me but it is another direction you can go for.


--

Repetition of my comments

I know you have come looking for recommendations and I agree to some level the developers and the mission statements of each distro can impact how stable the machine is, however, I have had out of the box problems on all distro's and I have found any distro is repairable if you are willing to spend time to research the issue.

For me it is how the system is layed out and the over all goal of the project that chooses, which is right for my application. You only need to install the system once and then using it and maintaining is the long road to travel.

[tim_s]

Hi,

I do not want to bombard you with information but Linux is a personal choice.

For example I know xorangekiller (Not picking on you - just know you are active in this thread) enjoys using Debian but I am sure he tried a few different distros before settling (If he even has settled)

Day to day grind, applications, ease of maintaining, belief in the mission statement - I could not even guess why xorangekiller has chosen this distro. This works for him and his life style and he is happy. (P.s. Debian is not a bad distro at all)

I like Gentoo and that is my personal choice, the main complaint is usually focused on how challenging the installation process is, however, to me the installation is sensible - just not done automatically for you. Even so, the lengthy process is a one time ordeal and the o/s itself is fantastic for day to day use - sensible in my opinion.

Had you asked me 3 years ago, I would of probably recommended a different distro, I remember the first time I used Gentoo - the installation was easy, not something new to me but trying to use portage WOW, basic items did not need anything special but as soon as I wanted to install something like PS3 Media Server I was looping through dependencies - took me a second to figure out what all this information being thrown at me from the emerge command actually meant - to me I thought I was doing exactly what was asked of me.

Sometimes you just need to leave your comfort zone and play around with the different distros, nobody has ever lead me in the right direction on the forum - I needed to find what works for me through my own personal experiences.

[jaroli.tamas]

Thanks for you too My personal favourites were Debian, and Ubuntu (before Unity), and now I will try Arch. My idea is to make 3 different VBoxes, with the same config, and run a Debian, an Arch, and a Xubuntu, and test them, which is better for me

[tim_s]

jaroli.tamas, on 28 January 2013 - 19:36, said:

Thanks for you too My personal favourites were Debian, and Ubuntu (before Unity), and now I will try Arch. My idea is to make 3 different VBoxes, with the same config, and run a Debian, an Arch, and a Xubuntu, and test them, which is better for me

Sounds like a great idea!

[guitmz]

cinnarch, fuduntu, mageia, fedora, debian, crunchbang, pretty much any distro... they all are customizable, they all are good