So guys, what's your favorite Linux distro? Over here is Arch Linux
What ever one that people hate on the most. Ubuntu with unity last I checked.
Ubuntu is fine. Gnome 3 is fine. You don't have to use unity. You don't have to use Gnome 3. xmonad is fine. Ubuntu is fine as a base. You can use any WM you want. The ubuntu repos are up to date. Just use ubuntu. Use arch if you want to learn how to put together a distro. Don't use gentoo. Gentoo is a joke. Gentoo was always a joke. Just use Ubuntu.
I disagree with you. I love Fedora, I use it where I can, but it doesn't always Just Work. 99% of the time it's perfect, but I've found as soon as you want to change something, such as install a new program, you're probably going to have to do some troubleshooting. Too many times I've started to install, using yum, and it's thrown a fit over not having the correct library packages, the correct versions, or even in one case not having PostgreSQL installed despite not showing up as a requirement. Perhaps I've just had bad luck, but in most cases it's meant I've had to sit around for a few hours fighting to get things working using instructions that were written for Ubuntu and trying to translate between the two. Don't get me wrong, I love Fedora, but sometimes it would be nice to be "the popular distro".
Wow, I've never had trouble with anything besides trying to install a spotify for linux preview, and even that was fairly easy once I stopped trying to find a repo for it and just installed from the tarball. I have NEVER experienced an issue when installing something with the package manager though (Yum or dnf)
I had issues with the NVIDIA drivers, or rather, swapping over to the libre ones; after that was issues with getting Steam to work, which mostly required launching, checking which library was reported missing, figuring out which package to download, rinse & repeat. I had a few issues with Ruby and various frameworks/gems and a few issues trying to get my printer/scanner to function (it did... then didn't and then wouldn't work on any other system so I evidently locked it somehow, fixed it in the end but still!) Like I said, it just feels like Fedora doesn't really get a look in, every bit of media I see about doing something on Linux is for Ubuntu; yes it mostly is cross-compatible, but trying to work out what the RPM equivalent to a package is can be tedious.
Gentoo. People consider me a masochist because of this. I like to run bleeding edge stuff, but after Arch upgrades fucking things up to the point where I had to re-install, I was done with that. A quick Google search at the time showed that I was not alone in that problem either. Gentoo was also the last time I was able to get everything to work like I wanted it to, and while compiling all day was not fun, being so involved in my OS was. Then I was forced off of it by my employer. I am supposed to run their cruddy out dated version of Red Hat, but I manage to squeak by with FC20 unnoticed.
My favorite is Ubuntu. I like Ubuntu's eye for design, like Unity and the ayatana scroll bars. I haven't made up my mind about snappy yet, I'll wait until more work has been done to it. Arch Linux was...fun...to install last time I tried. I prefer the easy to install distros, even if it means a little more overhead compared to the advanced distros.
Unity is not bad, the problem is that is heavy.
Depends on what context we are talking about. I've used Fedora on my home computers for a number of years now. I really enjoy the mix of up to date packages along with general stability. I work as a systems engineer, so for servers I have a strong preference to either Debian or CentOS. Both are relatively stable and very well documented which makes setting up services and troubleshooting pretty painless.
On servers I use CentOS. It's a very stable system and, like you said, it's very well documented.
I absolutely love OpenSUSE. The system control application it comes with, YAST2, is extremely powerful and easy to use.
I also have used OpenSuse in the past, and YAST it's very good indeed The next version looks good
Depends on what you are planning to do. My PC is running Arch, after trying: Mandriva (or was i Mandrake ? it was years ago) which were very unstable for me, Ubuntu always go in my way, Debian was rock solid but too old, Gentoo was amazing, but compile times took to long. Arch gives me the freedom to setup my machine as I want it, doesn't get in my way, no need to upgrade every two years and frankly, it's more stable (as in, doesn't crash and burn, not APIs) then Ubuntu. My personal server run with Debian, which is very stable. The exception is minimal KVM server, then Arch is acceptable, as long as it's not a commercial KVM server.
I also run Arch, after trying many different distributions. I agree with the negative aspects of each distribution you outlined. Additionally to your comment I would like to emphasize some of the most important advantages of using Arch: * No unwanted bloatware * Exceptional and comprehensive wiki: Almost every problem I ever encountered could be solved by following steps of the archwiki * AUR (Arch User Repository): Provides almost every unofficial package I ever needed. Usually it is well maintained, but packages may require some minor modification. However I still find this to be less effort than building packages manually Still, for my servers I prefer Ubuntu/Debian for stability and ease of setup. Also, for some of my family and friends, who do not really care what operating system they use, I used to install Linux Mint. Most of them are not too proficient with using computers, but they actually find it easier to use Linux Mint than using Windows. In addition they do not seem to accidentally break their installation as frequently as they "broke" Windows. I should also note that I have nothing against using Windows as a operating system. I only preferred Linux Mint for easier maintenance.
Your points on Arch are spot on, but I think that they are the topping of the cake. I have a lot against Windows, the system is unstable, bloated and lacking at the same time*, the system is insecure, bad update mechanism (rebooting after every update ? taking hours to reboot after some updates), the system is very closed - you can't configure it to your liking, as it's not FOSS you can't see how it works. I'm not installing Linux for people, if you can't read the instructions to install one newbies friendly distributions I don't want you asking for my support. But for friends that do use Linux, helping them is easy, I can just give them one-two command lines. Unlike Windows where you need to guide their mouse to the icon that looks like a ... I did break my rule once, a person that needed help got Windows tech support from me (reinstalling the printer's driver, removing the new million of tool bars that installed them self into IE, removing viruses, etc...) on a weekly basis. Once he had Linux, it stopped, he could just use the computer and everything just kept working. Not installing Linux now days and not giving Windows tech support. * A clean installation of Windows 7 is taking over 20GB after updates, for this waste of space you are left with a horrible browser, no office software, no good shell, the WM is very lacking, etc...
I would be so happy if Elementary was built on Debian and not on Ubuntu
That's a good choice, I just don't like windows and every game I play is available for the pinguim, except GTA and one or two more games
The Witcher 2 was ported to Linux, so probably 3 will be ported as well.
CrunchBang is dead but people have created BunsenLabs to replace it
I've been using Arch for a long time now and I really think it is a fantastic distro. It requires a little more knowledge than some others such as Mint/fedora etc. but this means that you learn a lot whilst you're getting everything sorted. The documentation is extremely well written and I've always found it easy to follow, and there is a great community who are very friendly to new starters. I like the fact that you chose precisely what goes into your system, so you can have gnome, kde, openbox... the list is endless. From a development point of view the speed at which packages are updated is fantastic, meaning that you're always using the latest versions.
I started with Lubuntu before moving to Crunchbang. I wanted to use Arch immediately, and after practicing a bit I was able to get it to work, albeit the wifi was finicky. So I went with Crunchbang eventually and stuck with that for about a year. Once I heard the news Crunchbang was losing support, I took that as a sign that the time had come to switch over to Arch Linux like I'd always wanted to do. The install isn't nearly as bad as people make it out to be. It's a little daunting at first having to physically build and make your own partitions and file systems, but once you're over the hump, it makes sense, and you have a completely empty system to build on top of. After fiddling a while with getting xmonad and xmobar with custom scripts to display my wifi, volume, and battery levels, as well as showing the current artist and song through MPD while it's playing, I've finally got a computer that's completely my own, and runs lighter than anything else I could throw at it. All of that and the wonderful pacman package manager, and I couldn't want anything else. Arch is a great distro, and I've yet to worry about any major breakages from any updates. Granted, if you're wanting to update your system once every few months, Arch probably isn't for you, as taking such a long time is liable to create some problems from broken dependencies. But if you're fine with throwing a quick pacman -Syu every few days to a week, you should be just fine.
I use Xubuntu on this laptop, but I'm planning to move back to Mint. It's the one I recommend to people who are willing to leave Windows but are afraid that Linux will ruin their life. Everyone has different comfort levels when it comes to ease of use, and some people don't mind spending an hour or two (or more) trying to figure out why something isn't working the way they think it should. Personally that's not what I look for in a distro; if I wanted a learning experience, I think I would install Arch or Gentoo on one of the laptops I don't use, but when I just want to watch a youtube video I don't want anything to stand in my way, especially my own machine.
That's true, Linux Mint is very user frendly Installing Arch it's more easy than it looks like.
I used to like Ubuntu a lot but nowadays I have Mint installed on 2 PCs. It's mostly because I can use a Gnome 2-like desktop. :)
The Mint guys did a awesome work with Cinnamon