Distros of interest and why.

[linuxviolin]

Sorry for writing so much but after reading how the Linux desktop was dead I have to completely disagree with that. Distributions are taking their own direction, taking responsibility for what they are releasing and in my opinion providing a higher level of quality than ever before.

And multiple bugs, perpetual, fast (complete) changes, librairies, well, er..., complete changes once something goes running about correctly finally, bad, stupid ideas, incompatibilities, even sometime between two versions of the same dstro etc etc Yeah, cool.

Yes, I know, I'm provoking a little. Although...

[Pikachu6708]

I'm considering setting Tiny Core up with Thunar, Dillo, VLC, LibreOffice, WINE, and DOSBox, and auditioning it on my ancient PC to see if it does better than Crunchbang on the meager specs I currently got. I got Tiny Core installed on a spare 8-gig hard drive, and if the auditioning goes really well, I'm formatting the 10-gig that Crunchbang's installed on and replacing that install with Tiny Core, might use Fluxbox as its GUI, might use Openbox+Tint2 or FLWM+Tint2, not sure yet.

ALSA would also be required in that case though, along with Xfce4-power-manager.

[exploder]

Yes, I know, I'm provoking a little. Although...

Provoke all you want. You are entitled to your opinion.

Edit: The only real bug that I needed to fix in any of the distributions I mentioned was the gstreamer bug present in Mint 13 and Ubuntu 12.04. The solution was very simple.

http://www.webupd8.org/2012/06/fix-mp4- ... -1204.html

I have had no other issues with any of the distributions I talked about, they all work and preform just fine for me. After 4 months of recovering from some very serious eye surgery maybe I am just seeing the glass as half full rather than half empty though. I am very happy with the distros I am running and I appreciate all of the hours of hard work that went into creating them.

Edit 2: I guess I am just happy for what I have instead of worrying about what I don't have.

[cwwgateway]

I agree with exploder - When I first came to linux (August of 2011) it was going through a lot of changes. I first tried Ubuntu 11.04 (with gnome 2 because I, being a noob, hadn't installed the drivers needed for unity). I liked Gnome 2 even though I had no sense in my mind of customization - I came from Windows where basically everybody has the same setup they had when the bought the computer (meaning in my mind, all Gnome 2 was was 2 bars, one on the top and one on the bottom). I finally installed the drivers, and I got unity. I thought it was okay too, although it was a little buggy and I sometimes couldn't find things (I had to go back to gnome every time I wanted to change a setting - the system menu was really helpful). I then learned about desktop environments and tried kde, lxde, xfce, and even gnome shell (which I somehow managed to install on Ubuntu 11.04 which was still based on Gnome/GTK 2). I thought they all were nice (Most of them had some bug, although it was more my fault than the DE's because I installed all of these on the same system). In the end, I decided I liked Gnome 2 best. I went to Mint 11 (after a very bad experience with Debian 6's installer). The point of this is that I came to linux just as Gnome Shell/Unity/All of those new DE's were coming out. My first impression of linux was just before all of the major distros (besides debian) moved to Gnome 3 or something else. And honestly, all of the distros that I tried (openSUSE, Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, Mint) were kind of buggy (Ubuntu because of Unity, Mint because of Ubuntu, Debian because they don't support WPA2 in their installer - not a bug, but it still sucks, Fedora because of Gnome 3/Shell, and openSUSE was actually pretty good except I had some trouble learning it). The same could be said for the DEs - I won't list them, but they had some problems. I was, however content with Gnome 2/Mint, and I was convinced that Gnome 3 wouldn't be very good for me (because I was happy with Gnome 2).

Then came the Fall releases and there were many attempts to get away from (or change) Gnome 3. Mint had MGSE and MATE (which, at that point, were the seeds of an idea, but they were kind of like unity was with 11.04 - buggy and incomplete), Ubuntu had Unity which had matured a little, Fedora and OpenSUSE had Gnome Shell 3.2, and some distros had switched to xfce or kde. I think this was the worst (or close to worst) wave of linux releases in the past few years (I know I wasn't there for some, but I've used Mint 9/Ubuntu 10.04 and Mint 10/Ubuntu 10.10 and they are all solid releases). I think it was also a very important wave (along with the spring 2011 wave). It may have been bad and buggy, but it laid the groundwork for what we have now - all of these distros really started to take their directions. The Mint 13/Ubuntu 12.04/Fedora 17 wave has really defined and polished those directions - Mint is going with MATE and Cinnamon, Ubuntu with Unity, etc. When I was using all of these distros, I was really surprised how far they'd come from their previous releases.

Yeah, they have bugs and problems. And yeah, we could have kept on going with Gnome 2 and we would have been happy. But I think all of the distros and all of the DEs (including Xfce and KDE) have really become different and chosen their own paths - they have a philosophy (or something like that) now. They also are a heck of a lot less buggy than in 2011. I think the loss of Gnome 2 affected everybody a lot, but I think the distros are all the better for it (kind of like "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger" - I know that's not true, but I think this did make the distros stronger). Hopefully we will continue to improve and Gnome won't set us back with Gnome 4.

As for interesting distros:
Linux Mint 14 - I know it hasn't come out yet, but I'm curious what the new features will be (now that we don't need to fix gnome).
Ubuntu 12.10 - Same as Linux Mint - they don't need to make unity usable anymore (just give it new features), and it seems like they're going to have interesting features (based on the articles I've read - I haven't used the betas yet)
SolusOS - Both SolusOS 1 and the testing releases of 2 are very interesting
openSUSE - openSUSE 12.2 just came out and I've heard its very good. I've always liked openSUSE, but I've never used it as my main distro because I seem to have this fear of venturing too far from debian/debian-based distros. I could never
Mageia - I think Mageia is a rising star in the linux world (especially for KDE distros). I've never used Mandriva/Mandrake, but it seems it used to be pretty popular, and I have a feeling that Mageia is kind of Mandrake/Mandriva reborn. It's also #2 on distrowatch, ahead of Ubuntu.
PCLinuxOS - I've never used it, but I'm very curious after exploder's strong recommendation.
Sabayon - Sabayon reminds me of mint. Mint was originally started to make linux easier (specifically, in the very beginning, to bring codecs to people) because Ubuntu wasn't user friendly enough. Sabayon takes Gentoo, which is definitely not a user friendly (or at least a new user friendly) distro, and makes it user friendly. It also is in its infancy-ish stages, and I think it could definitely grow.
Swift Linux - Swift Linux by itself isn't too special - it's LMDE (still on update pack 2) with icewm, light apps, etc (and it doesn't look very good). However, LMDE Xfce, while being pretty light, is meant to be a fully featured version, not a light version. If you have an old computer that you want to run mint on, it works really well. I update it to debian testing (which is fairly easy to do because it doesn't have any gnome/nautilus problems) and install Xfce (and other stuff) on it. This customization is my current distro (it is a little bit more complex than what I said, but that's the basics).

Edit: I fixed some grammar mistakes and clarified a few sentences

[exploder]

Very nice post cwwgateway! I think that you and I both are seeing the glass as half full. Things are getting interesting and developers are actually developing. I like this trend!

[cwwgateway]

Very nice post cwwgateway!

Thank you, although it was inspired by your post .

I think that you and I both are seeing the glass as half full. Things are getting interesting and developers are actually developing. I like this trend!

I completely agree - the future is bright

[Adelante]

I've been running the Ubuntu 12.10 betas for Unity and Kubuntu since yesterday, on separate installations, though I've never been an Ubuntu user before. Kubuntu is working perfectly for me. I ran into a couple of bugs in the Unity version of 12.10, which is to be expected, but I have to say, this is the very first time I found myself appreciating Unity. I don't know if I'll keep it, but it is very nice.

Ubuntu 12.10 - Same as Linux Mint - they don't need to make unity usable anymore (just give it new features), and it seems like they're going to have interesting features (based on the articles I've read - I haven't used the betas yet)

[exploder]

Adelante, I value what you had to say about Unity because you said that you had not tried it before. I have only seen demonstrations on the new features for Unity in 12.10 but they appear to making some nice refinements and bringing in some new features. I like Unity in 12.04 and I think that by the next LTS release Unity will have made some large strides and will be much more popular. Gnome Shell seems to keep removing features and I just don't understand what direction they are going with it. Unity and Cinnamon have direction and goals that are clear, I guess that is why I am so interested in their development.

[Pikachu6708]

What about Puppy 5.2.8 and Puppy 5.3.3? In addition, what's Puppy 5.4.4 going to be based off on? 'Cause 5.2.8's based on Lucid Lynx, 5.3.3's based on Slackware, I assume 5.4.4's going to be based on Precise Pangolin? I mean there's going to be some Puppy release based on Precise, I bet, which would be really sweet. Extremely lightweight, easy-to-use distro based on Precise Pangolin..

[nunol]

Puppy Precise is in development. If is like Lucid it's going to be heavier than Puppy Wary or Racy. You can follow the development here: http://bkhome.org/blog/?page=1

[Pikachu6708]

Cool!

[linuxviolin]

Provoke all you want. You are entitled to your opinion.

exploder, I like you. Really. You are always weighted, open-minded, calm...

[exploder]

exploder, I like you. Really. You are always weighted, open-minded, calm...

I try my best, besides your my friend.

[Tunnelrat81]

I'm not terribly experience or knowledgeable about linux in general, but I've been a 'trial and error' user of many of the ubuntu releases for the last 7 or so years. For example, my first install required about 2 weeks of troubleshooting and struggle to get my wireless network card working on my old desktop. Once it was finally working, it was solid, but there were other issues as well that stood in the way of it being my main OS, especially with a wife still in school and needing a reliable machine. I since went to mac OS for a bit, and eventually replaced that with a windows 7 machine which has been our main computer for ~2 years. Only recently did I peek back in to see what Ubuntu was doing, and started trying out new and similar distros to install on an old P4 2.8 ghz desktop that was handed down to us a year or so ago.

Installed the new Ubuntu 11 on it with Unity desktop and was never very happy with the performance. Ended up upgrading that install (via upgrade) to 12.04 and the same held true. I was able to get better (usable with patience) performance out of it with running Gnome Classic, but still wasn't terribly happy. I then tried installed Mint 13 Mate, and got a small performance boost and really liked the interface. If I had a more powerful computer with a decent GPU, I'd definitely run Mint 13 Cinnamon, as I like the feel and polish of it.

Only recently I partitioned the drive down to add Solus OS 1.2 just to see what all the fuss was about and I have to say, the difference is apparent. I really like what they've done with gnome2 (I know it's on it's way out), and overall it's a MUCH lighter OS without being restrictive. It makes my old desktop fairly snappy again and hasn't given me a lick of trouble. I'm extremely excited to see what comes of SolusOS 2, but probably won't run it on this machine for the likely performance step down I'd take with the gnome 3 visual front end running on my slow integrated graphics chip.

I'm still not quite willing to install linux on our main desktop (partially due to my wife's work/education responsibilities and her need for windows specific software etc.) but I find myself using my older, MUCH less powerful desktop more and more since installing SolusOS 1.2 on it. So far it just works, and that just happens to be what we simpler linux users look for in a good windows alternative OS. =)

-Jeremy

[cwwgateway]

Just as a quick note on SolusOS 2 - Ikey (the SolusOS developer) has patched gnome-classic so that it is very similar to gnome 2 and so that it actually uses about (maybe slightly more) the same resources as 1.2. I find it very interesting the speed difference between something like xubuntu and debian testing with xfce is very large. Recently I sort of moved from Swift Linux with Xfce to Xubuntu to see how (X)ubuntu was doing. I was impressed by the ease of installing things (things that normally take a little bit of work to install in debian), but I think the 100 MB extra RAM usage kills it for me - I run Swift Linux + Xfce + Synapse + AWN + Other Stuff with about 120 MB of RAM (I'm very RAM conscious because my old PC that is a linux-only box only has 490 MB of RAM), and Xubuntu + Xfce + Synapse + AWN + Other Stuff uses about 220. SolusOS is even better than pure debian because it optimizes the kernel and many of the apps. I'd use it as my default on my old PC, but I like Xfce and Debian Testing better than Gnome 2 and Debian Stable (I use the SolusOS repos either way).