What was your favorite All Time Distro?

[danielcombs]

I have been installing and using Linux Systems for almost 20 years.

I started with Mandriva because everything came up working, and that was a big deal to a newbie back then, still is I suppose (especially wifi)

OpenSuse, PCLinuxOS, Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, and many of the spin offs from those distros......

Looking back, my favorite was PCLinuxOS Mini Me. Mini Me was a basic KDE system with nothing else. Once installed, you would go to the rerositories and add the apps you wanted. Once finished, you had a system with everything you wanted, and nothing you didn't.

I wish Mint would come out with a " Mini Me" option.

[Hoser Rob]

That's a great idea. The closest thing I can think of now is Ubuntu Minimal, which would be more work to set up. But if you want a minimal setup I think it's a lot better to start stripped down and add the things you need than to try and remove the things you don't need. Esp. since after more than a decade of using just Linux I still get updates for packages I've never heard of.

[TaterChip]

Mint 21.1 finally allowed me to escape from Microsoft. So no matter what, that will always be my favorite

[Pjotr]

Linux Mint 21.3. Best of the best.

[danielcombs]

Obviously, Mint is my favorite now. We all love Mint, and for good reason. IMO Mint is the GOAT ( I know many of you would argue for the underlying Ubuntu, but Mint has brought so many from the dark side !)

I was kind of asking in a nostalgic kinda way.

I'll add another. Back in the days of XP, OpenSuse KDE was one heck of a system.

I felt a little dirty using it because of the corporate sponsorship, but it was rock solid, extremely refined and polished ( especially compared to most other distros).

I remember it being a lot of work to get everything right, but was well worth it. It really was the only system in it's day that could rival MS XP.

[Hoser Rob]

.... Back in the days of XP, OpenSuse KDE was one heck of a system.....

I know a guy who just installed that a week ago. It's still pretty good from the looks of it, and yast looks very cool.

A rolling relase isn't for me though. And yast may be cool bit so is Synaptic Package Manager, and I have a hard time imagining using Linux that didn't use the Debian packaging system.

I actually just replaced Debian based MX 21 KDE with Debian 12 KDE. I mean this afternoon. I'm not even finished installing all the apps I want but so far it's very, very nice. Faster than MX too, no idea why except maybe it hasn't acquired enough system clutter yet .

Debian Stable is my favorite these days, I may have installed LMDE if I liked Cinnamon. My wee POC netbook used to run Mint Xfce but runs Antix now. No Ubuntu based distro will run properly on something like that any more.

[danielcombs]

.... Back in the days of XP, OpenSuse KDE was one heck of a system.....

A rolling relase isn't for me though........

I am with you. A Rolling Release will eventually evolve to the point where something breaks.

I actually just replaced Mint 21.2 Cinnamon with Debian 12 Cinnamon because I was having issues with Mint. I mean late last night, early this morning. At first I installed deb12 Xfce, but I forgot how primitive XFCE was. I loaded this for troubleshooting purposes, but as you wrote, maybe it's because of an uncluttered new install, but this thing flies now. I may end up keeping this. I have a completely stable Mint 20.3 in my main system I rely on, this laptop is just for browsing for the most part.

[Hoser Rob]

Debian may be vanilla but it's smooth. And solid. ANd it seems pretty zippy, MX 21 KDE (which it replaced on my main Linux box) never ran quite as fast, and MX doesn't use systemd. I haven't even gotten around to disabling unneeded systemd calls in Debian yet and it doesn't seem to boot any slower and shuts down much faster.

The only thing I'm missing from MX is their huge toolkit, which is one of its best features. Good bunch of geeks there, no question.

The only thing that's kept me from Debian in the past is that before Bookworm they didn't offer live iso's with included nonfree firmware. Maybe there was a time that approach saved a bit of expensive RAM. But today I think that's pointless and extremely annoying.

However I would not recommend Debian to a Linux beginner. Their user base is largely pro and while the expertise level is very high, they are just not going to walk beginners through everything. I've seen Debian forum users responding to the typical sort of newbie questions you see here a number of times, and they just recommended installing Mint or Ubuntu instead. So unless Cinnamon really doesn't appeal to you I'd recommend LMDE to newbies looking for a Debian Stable based distro

Support is everything in Linux, esp. for beginners. That's why the vast majority of the Linux distros you see listed in Distrowatch are completely useless.

[Hoser Rob]

So what was my favorite distro? I suppose MX 21 KDE was really, it had the best version of KDE and worked the best OOTB. My current Debian 12 KDE doesn't count, too new.

Mint 17 KDE (and also Kubuntu 14.04) were right up there too. Ubuntu 14.04, which Mint 17.x was based on, was peak Ubuntu IME. I think it's been going downhill ever since. Not so much because of their recent attitude, More because I don't think they really have the resources to handle all the backports they have to do since they stopped using LTS mainline kernels.

[AndyMH]

xandros, it was my first linux OS.

[ivar]

I was kind of asking in a nostalgic kinda way.

not neccessarily my favorite but my first: Mandrake (7.0 maybe?), around 99/2000.
Downloaded it @ work over a weekend as soon as we got switched over from 64k dialup to 64k leased line

Installed it on a spare Acer minitower. Linux was "supposed" to be hard but I recall the install as very straightforward.
I was able to connect to our outlook webmail + RDP to windows without much hassle.

I was also able to break it spectacularly by installing new desktop environments and windows. Going Gnome2 > KDE > Fluxbox > IceWM or something was more than it would take , lol! And it was put aside
In retrospect, i regret that I didnt just start over and reinstalled it

[Hoser Rob]

...not neccessarily my favorite but my first: Mandrake (7.0 maybe?), around 99/2000.
Downloaded it @ work over a weekend as soon as we got switched over from 64k dialup to 64k leased line

Installed it on a spare Acer minitower. Linux was "supposed" to be hard but I recall the install as very straightforward.
I was able to connect to our outlook webmail + RDP to windows without much hassle.

I was also able to break it spectacularly by installing new desktop environments and windows. Going Gnome2 > KDE > Fluxbox > IceWM or something was more than it would take , lol! And it was put aside
In retrospect, i regret that I didnt just start over and reinstalled it

It's not easy in my experience to convince many users, esp fairly new ones, that reinstalling is often the easiest fix if you don't have a Timeshift restore point or other backup. Esp. in Linux. The number of possible package conflicts grows exponentially with the number of packages you have (this is really why I prefer Debian Stable or something based on it now),

[urdrwho]

A rolling relase isn't for me though. And yast may be cool bit so is Synaptic Package Manager, and I have a hard time imagining using Linux that didn't use the Debian packaging system.

I just installed a full working Fedora on a big fast USB. I had to disable the OS prober so Grub wouldn't add any other systems so I can travel around with a working USB. Checking out Fedora but you are correct the Debian packaging and installer system is a BIG deal. I can't believe that other systems still have all the involvement to add a program.

Plus a Debian based system is more geared to normal thought --- Example:
I had to update Grub on the Fedora USB. Normal Debian is sudo update-grub which is easy to remember and how a normal brain works. Fedora is this
sudo grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg.

Still have a lot of machines with Mint.

[KMD2023]

[edit] Nope, Kondara is Discontinued

Great Topic!

OK, I am about to confirm my age here...
Back in the mid '90s I was stationed in Japan and tried out a Distro called Kondara. It was the first GUI Linux I had tried at that point and it had some serious eye candy, which for me as a 20-something was just right.

I looked and it seems Kondara is still alive (maybe), but I tried to check historical releases so I could fire up a VM and relive 1996, but I found nothing older than '2000s.

Like I said, this is a great topic and I am still going to look for an older Kondara distro - I'm on a Mission!

Thanks for the thread!

[Hoser Rob]

I just installed a full working Fedora on a big fast USB. I had to disable the OS prober so Grub wouldn't add any other systems so I can travel around with a working USB. Checking out Fedora but you are correct the Debian packaging and installer system is a BIG deal. I can't believe that other systems still have all the involvement to add a program.

Plus a Debian based system is more geared to normal thought --- Example:
I had to update Grub on the Fedora USB. Normal Debian is sudo update-grub which is easy to remember and how a normal brain works. Fedora is this
sudo grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg.

I tried Fedora once, briefly. The package manager was broken and when I asked about it on their forum some of them said it was my fault for not reading the bugzillas, which did show the package manager shipped broken. Like I would have installed a release knowing the package manager was broken,

[brlfq]

I've tried many distros , really too many to list.

For years I used PCLinuxOS KDE and it was stable and had a good forum community. A few times the system got wrecked after an update so I walked away from Linux altogether for a while and have been using MacOS on an Mac Mini for some time.

Then I tried Linux Mint 21.2 Cinnamon and was really impressed by the system. It's now my on my dedicated Linux rig in my sig and I use it for all of my daily functions. The Mac Mini M2 Pro is still used on weekdays for a few dedicated functions but once they are running I'm using my Mint PC in parallel for normal online use.

Mint a great OS and I'll stick with it.

[MiZoG]

I was generally happy with pre-Unity Ubuntu but I wouldn't have switched to Linux as my main OS without settling with Mint.
So my first Mint 18.2/18.3 is the... GOAT.

[MikeNovember]

Hi,

Years ago, my favorite distribution was Knoppix, a live CD, then DVD, that you could also install.

It was based on Debian, with KDE.

Still exists, but I don't know if it is still updated.

It was the 1st live Linux 100% working.

Regards,

MN

[Schultz]

Going by the subject line, "What was . . . ," I'd have to say Linux Mint 17.3 with whatever version of Mate was used back then.

[Hoser Rob]

Going by the subject line, "What was . . . ," I'd have to say Linux Mint 17.3 with whatever version of Mate was used back then.

That was based on Ubuntu 14.04. Peak Ubuntu in my experience, I think they started going downhill after that. Not just the lack of transparency nowadays, IMO they have a habit of biting off more than they can chew.