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Best Simple Linux Distro [STUB ONLY]
---THIS REVIEW IS A STUB ONLY---
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Introduction
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At some time or other, many computer users think about trying Linux as an operating system instead of Windows. Of those who try it out, probably less than 1% stay with it in the long term. One reason is that, in the past, Linux was strictly an enthusiasts' OS and made no concession to ordinary PC users. However, things are changing, and there are now Linux 'distros' (short for 'distributions', each distribution comes with versions or variations of packages built on top of the linux kernel) that cater for those who just want a work tool or home computer for the usual browsing and file management, and have no time to change their way of life to suit a new OS. We think it's time to look at some 'basic'-style distros, Linux versions that can be used successfully by people new to Linux who don't want to get under the hood. There are also a couple of other factors that are relevant here: - Community support is important - so the quality of forum support and advice available is a factor. Some Linux user forums are noted for their suitability for newcomers with little knowledge - and some aren't. - A LiveCD or LiveUSB could be handy here. This is a Linux CD or USB that can be run as a trial OS before installing it, to see if you like the idea. This saves finding out too late you don't like the distro anyway. But note, you need a decent amount of RAM to do this, it won't work well (or at all) with 256MB of memory, as found on old machines. |
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Discussion
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The candidates under consideration for this review are: Ubuntu(s) |
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Comments
I need a menu, not a search button, to find the apps I want to run. I can never remember the names of 'em. So Ubuntu Unity drives me crazy, and Mint Cinnamon works the way I want it to. But Ubuntu is more up to date and polished, I think. So I installed Cinnamon on Ubuntu 12.04, and I like it. (I might try Enlightenment again, if I can figure it all out.)
i like using gnome classic, mostly because of its simplicity
At first look, Enlightenment is a bit frustrating simply because it is different. It's well worth the effort though because once you get to know it you appreciate not just the power and simplicity, but the beauty this desktop has to offer.
Pinguy OS (pinguy-os.sourceforge.net) pretty much settles the question:
Simple and intuitive install with all the functionality right out of the box.
Thought I would try this one out and I attempted to download. But it is a huge file and when I tried........after about 5 hours, VERY slow d/l speed from the site, it failed. Over 2 Gigs
Most distros offering a complete experience are now well over 1G. I appreciate this isn't very suitable for a slow connection, but the best option is to choose the torrent download.
May I suggest considering Peppermint as a candidate.
Tried it and like it very much. One of the few distro's that have identified my built-in Wifi in both HP notebook and desktop.... even before adding the driver..... wrote to flash drive of 4 GB and had room for all the updates. Plan to use it to check suspect computers at garage sales. Much easier to use than UBCD....
I checked this one out. Downloaded fine, and burnt onto cd...........ran it from the LiveCd...............looked fine, but I never could even get it to recognize my soundcard...........deleted. I've tried several that was more impressive..
It would be helpful for the benefit of others if you could say which distros these were and why.
Sound and network card issues are fairly frequent events across a range of distros but a post with details in the appropriate forum usually provides a fix.
This article is actually just a "stub" and needs a dedicated editor to write the review. Fancy taking it on? (or anyone?) :)
I just got a cheap laptop and installed Bodhi Linux, based on interesting reviews and descriptions. It uses the Enlightenment desktop which is lightweight but has a lot of interesting eye candy. It's based on Ubuntu 10.04, but comes with minimal apps; you need to download the ones you prefer. Having used Puppy, Mint LXDE and XFCE, and Ubuntu, all I can say is go to their website and have a look, and if you'd like to try something different it will only cost you a CD to check out the live version. I could see Mac people getting turned on by the style. I think it will get more user-friendly as it gets into new versions (it just came out). But, I haven't found any bugs yet and my audio, wifi, and webcam all work without fooling around.
Update: I just installed Bodhi 1.3 on my son's old XP laptop (512M RAM) for my grandkids to play with. It boots fast, looks good and has everything they need , and none of what they don't. I tried Puppy on it, and that's even faster, but runs as root all the time, no lower privilege users.
Maybe not necessary for the situation you describe, but the Bodhi "look" can be changed way outside of just switching to a new theme for anyone so inclined. Another fast distro that is truly different and elegant out of the box is Dreamlinux (just updated after quite a spell).
Arch and Gentoo are missing on the list.
Gentoo is great if you want to fully configure your system. Since it's source based you can optimize it for your specific processor. It's definitely not a beginners distro.
Compiling is done automatically by the package manager and you can set all kinds of options, which back-ends/front-ends/libraries etc to use or not use. It also great if you want bleeding edge and are not afraid to doing some hardcore problem solving. Most stuff can be found on the Gentoo wiki and when updating it will show you if you need to do additional actions for any program. I found it too time consuming in the end though and switched to arch.
Archlinux is also an advanced distribution, partitioning is done by hand in a text interface during installation and you need to answer quite a lot of question for which you need enough technical knowledge. After completion you need to install your desktop yourself and configure everything by editing the configuration text files. It's great if you love the command line and are a control freak like me. When updating it will never overwrite your old configuration files, instead it will create a new default file with the extension .pacnew. You will need to make the changes yourself if there have been changes in the format of the settings file (like added or removed features)
Both of those are rolling releases, which means they're continually updated and there's not a new version every year/half a year/two years, with a complete system update. The benefit is that if something breaks it's only one program and it's easy to find the cause and solve it. It can be troublesome too, like if it's an update to a new kernel driver, which changes your drive names from /dev/hda to /dev/sda (this happened to someone I know a few years back), you would need a rescue stick/CD to solve that and the knowledge to do so.
Arch is binary based and has too flavours 32bit and 64bit. In addition to their repositories they have a build system for creating packages from source. They have utilities available to do this easily. They make it quite easy to extend the list of available programs. This is explained in detail on their wiki.
I originally started with Ubuntu and really liked the fact that it would create a partition for itself during installation, it resized my original windows partition for me, created a boot menu so I could choose between Windows and Linux and I only needed to answer basic questions during install, like confirming the time, choosing the time zone, preferred language and keyboard layout. 30 Minutes later I had an up to date working Linux system with every program installed I would need for normal use.
Flash is missing though and other proprietary software, like codecs to play mp3. It's easy enough to install, but Mint makes those small details just a bit easier and less troublesome.
The problem with Ubuntu for me was, that I like to configure a lot of stuff manually to set it up like I prefer, and every half yearly update this caused me problems. If you don't do a lot of tweaking those updates work quite well. I've seen so with other people. Usually all problems were solved within a couple of hours though, but it still didn't go as smoothly as I wanted it to.
I've also read some people have good experience with PCLinuxOS and Fedora. Every distribution has its own quirks, they use different patches, include different default software, default settings, etc. So were one distribution works great for someone, it may not do so for someone else, due to the hardware used.
There may be some machines were Fedora will recognise all hardware automatically and Ubuntu doesn't. It can also be the other way around.
Communities/Documentation
Ubuntu has probably the largest community and it's great for newbies with technical problems. I must say I saw a lot of repeating questions on the forums there when I was an active member (and Ubuntu user). I also found that questions which were too difficult, got very few responses. This is partly due to the amount of traffic. If your problem is too hard, few people can answer it and more easily answered problems come to the top of the recent posts. Nobody (or at least almost nobody) will check 3 pages of posts, to see if there's one particularly difficult one for which he happens to have the answer. And bumping your post every 24 hours for weeks on end is also not a good solution.
The Ubuntu on line documentation, maintained by Canonical is not the best in my opinion. It's not up to date at all times and misses information. There are a lot of tutorials and how-to's available on the internet though. Since Ubuntu is mainly focused on ex-windows users, most documentation (including Cannonical's) is GUI based, which is not the best way to do so in Linux.
Commando's in a terminal are less ambiguous and there are not so many changes between versions. It usually allows you to change more option too, than you can do from the GUI front-end. The configuration files are usually quite well documented (by using comments to explain what they do).
The Arch wiki is great and it was one of the reasons I switched to Arch, since I ended up there quite a lot of times when searching for a solution. It's well maintained and quite up to date. It will also explain enough to make you understand what you're doing.
The community is smaller and more technical. Questions which can be easily answered by a simple Google search or reading their wiki will not be received positively. They won't hold your hand and tell you step by step what to do, but expect some basic system knowledge. Also responses are less quick then on the Ubuntu forums. Usually they are friendly as long as you are too.
Gentoo also has excellent documentation, very technical though and the same goes for their forums. It's especially helpful if you want to compile beta software and test it. You'll need the most technical knowledge of these 3.
Neither Gentoo, nor Arch has an official live CD, unlike Ubuntu or Mint.
I think another thing to consider when changing to Linux or try it, is the desktop environment, also referred to as DE. There are 2 major DE's, Gnome and KDE. They're the most fully featured and it's mostly a matter of taste which one to use. Following them is Xfce, a bit lighter with almost as many features. It's my personal favourite.
There are even lighter DE's. The main ones are Lxde and Enlightenment, also known as E17. E17 has been in alpha/beta stage for years, but it has a quite attractive look and there are some distributions which have used it successfully. I haven't seen it working bug-free though. You can use one of these two if you have quite old and slow hardware and little ram available. E17 is the more attractive looking, Lxde is more stable, but lacks more features.
Most distributions allow you to change you DE, but they usually have a preference and choose one them as the standard, in the case of Ubuntu this is gnome. I've noticed in reviews that the preferred desktop usually works better than the other choices. So if you like a certain DE, you're usually better off, when choosing a distribution for which this is the default.
The exception on this rule are Arch, Gentoo and Slackware, since they have no desktop installed by default. There may be more of them which I don't know off.
First of all, this is a "stub". It is not a complete article yet. Second of all, please do not make such long posts. If you desire to make long posts, then feel free to come over to our forums to have some discussions.
The final review/ discussion should make a distinction between regular and lightweight distros especially with regard to older hardware.
As a linux newbie I had Puppy Linux LiveCD up and running within 2 hours including download and burning the cd on my 10 year old Dell pc, PIII, 512MB RAM, 10GB HD Win98.
Puppy, Slitaz and Tinycore are the only live CDs that load fast on old hardware. The advantage of PL is that it's 100mb download, can run as a live cd AND store your preferences and files on your hard drive (called a Frugal Install.) So you don't need to install the OS itself to your pc to have the benefits of an installed OS. In this config it boots to desktop in under a minute.
For sheer design and Win-like comprehensiveness I like Linux Mint 9 RC1 LXDE (lightweight version) interface and file manager best (compared to PL 5.01, Slitaz 3.0, Tinycore 3.0, Vector Light 6.0) but it isn't quick running as a live cd on older machines despite being touted for such. I have yet to install it to the hard drive it as it demands more space than I currently have available. If it runs fast installed it would be first choice.
As it stands, in descending order I liked the following Live CDs best:
Puppy Linux 5.01 (the frugal install is a brilliant idea.)
Slitaz 3.0 (Light and fun and easy to install add'l software.)
Linux Mint 9 RC1 LXDE
Tinycore 3.0 (nice and light but very sparse for newbies.)
Vector Linux Light 6.0 (no faster than Mint and not as slick.)
This is a general post as I have had some trouble and headaches with installing Linux Distros.
First of all KEEP CLEAR OF UBUNTU. This nasty distro is probably the worst out there. It promises the earth, which is why I got my mother to install it, then falls flat on its face and caused untold problems to the degree that I spent about a month long-distance (I was in the US and she was in the UK) helping my mother getting the bloody thing working properly so that she could do very basic stuff like check emails, go on the net, writing letter, and playing DVDs. I do not expect this type of behavior from a Linux distro, but then again it is more commercial than most yet does not charge you for it.
After reading about what people have to say about Linux Mint 7 (www.linuxmint.com) I found that a lot of users were also pissed off at Ubuntu, especially the later versions from 9 onwards.
These were the issues that I found with Ubuntu 9.x and 10.x:
Does not tell you how and where to update, or how to add programs (this was burnt as a live CD at a library and then taken home to install) in a way that one does not have to go onto forums to try and find the answer, or do something like delve into the CD and print a manual.
It sets a password for root without telling you what the damn password is, which is different to the user account one is booted into without being told that you have booted into a user account. There is only one person using this pc so that was real dumb of the makers of this distro (Linux Mint sets the user account as root so there is no user home folder - subsequently one password required).
The OS updates automatically without telling you that it has set that parameter. So it does not tell you how to change that parameter either.
Updates now regularly break the installation to the degree that I got MAD ENOUGH to turn ALL updates OFF (yes, I am in the UK now). I never alloow anything to be updated, unless I am installing a new piece of software that requires new libraries (Why the hell can't the old ones be used?).
With ALL updates turned off there is now an annoying red triangle in the top panel bar near to the right that just sits there letting you know that your system is out of date. Talk about getting me well and truly angry ..... In Windows that NEVER happened as I was able to control how Windows notified you of whether the system was up to date or not.
Ubuntu is a truly nasty piece of junk. And it is all down to the people that code it. Why? Because Linux Mint is built on Ubuntu yet Mint runs better than Ubuntu ever did if what I have read on the linuxmint.com forum is to be believed. Yet even these guys are seriously thinking of junking the Ubuntu base and going over to a purely Debian based flavor of Mint, because these guys are finding that the lax and lazy people at Ubuntu who are causing the problems that Ubuntu users experience is now trickling up to Linux Mint itself. Users have said that Linux Mint 7 is the best version and after that issues started cropping up here and there.
And believe me, I am not at all surprised.
For those wanting to ditch Windows, like I have wanted to do since 1999 when I first tried installing Linux - 4 distros by the way - I have found it quite frustrating to see that there is still a ways to go before I will switch myself. Linux Mint 7 is very tempting. But I may wait until they go over to a more stable base (Debian).
Anyway, that is my 2 cents worth.
Try Linux by all means but stay away from one nasty sucker - Ubuntu.
I am sorry but I have to tell you that you don't know what you are talking about. You are simply having some problems that have nothing to do with Ubuntu and everything to do with your attitude and lack of knowledge. You also say that you would wait till Mint gets a more stable base (Debian) - if you had problem with Ubuntu I would suggest that you don't even think about Debian and Debian base...
You are entitled to express an opinion, but to say that something is rubbish because it didn't work for you is immature to say the least.
This is not a criticism of the poster or their knowledge.
Firstly I too dislike Ubuntu but must comment on it's policy with regard to root.
As someone who uses UNIX (Solaris) every day I'm used to having account separation and normally having an unprivileged account and switching to root for admin tasks when needed. UNIX is designed to be multi-user and you don't want one user taking the box down. For people from Windows this is odd and needing 2 passwords not what they are used to. Actually they are used to simply doing what they want any way.
Ubuntu took the view that using a tool called sudo normal users can do admin tasks without needing the root password so while root is still needed access to root isn't. By default Ubuntu is set to let any user do anything but you can set up sudo to only allow some tasks to some users/groups. You can even set it so it doesn't need a password at all.
Personally I like a combination of both sudo and traditional root. (On Ubuntu you can "sudo su -" to get to the root shell and then use passwd to set a password.) Then I can configure sudo to allow users to do some admin tasks but not others.
Mepis 8.5 is a good choice for those who want debian stable as the direct base. Mint will in all probability remain based majorly on Ubuntu - the debian based version would be a separate thing and not the major / default atleast for the time being. Like stable debian, infrequent updates and a huge software database.
PCLinuxOS although is not directly based on debian, is an equally good choice. But due to it being a rolling release, updates are more frequent. But quite less than ubuntu or its derivatives.
For any linux newbie, i will like to advice that if you do not have any major windows only dependent software, you should go ahead and try a linux distro for the following reasons:- safe,secure,fast. As a long time windows user, my most important concern has always been safety and security and for that I have an antivirus/antimalware, Anti-rootkit/HIPS/browser protection utilities + sandbox. There is always a threat of something from the network or usb/cds and what not.
The three best distros for linux newbies are Mint8/9, Mepis8.5 and PC Linux OS 2010, in no particular order. Though I have to add that ubuntu, opensuse, mandriva are not bad.
All the three distros which I have mentioned have very good hardware detection, very good live cds, out of the box installed flash,firefox, multimedia, office applications, cd/dvd writing software, pdf viewer, photo management software, instant messenger, and a whole lot of other software. And huge amount of installable softwares.
Imagine getting such a system on a single “free” CD which installs itself within 10 minutes (for comparison, a windows system for getting all this functionality will atleast require 2-3 hours).
They very well integrate with a windows system, can read/write windows partitions and can make a dual boot entry.
All the three have very good documentation and great forums. But the killer function is the help provided at the respective irc channels, where other users will guide you through each and every problem.
And good luck.
why delete the link to the linux distro guide? is someone elses opinion not acceptable? moderation/bias gone mad!
The link returned a 404
'Ubuntu 10.04 triumphs over GRUB bug'
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/29/ubuntu_10_04_bug_delay/
'Ubuntu's Lucid Lynx stalks PC and Mac converts'
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/27/ubuntu_10_04_mac_windows/
I have tried a number of distros recently and here is my 2 cents worth:
Fedora: useless; it kept on giving me errors when I wanted to update the system and the Downloads folder kept bugging me to allow Bluetooth enabled downloads.
PCLOS: useless; comes packed with a veritable load of features and software (which initially attracted me), but like Fedora refused to update itself and the one time it did, it locked me out of Synaptic afterwards! Moreover, it refuses to play nice with other distros if you want to dual or even multiple boot.
Linux Mint; very nice and clean, but why not just use Ubuntu? I can see the attractiveness of it for complete beginners though.
OpenSUSE; with Gnome; quite nice and certainly an attractive prospect. Installation is a bit more complex than most, but it comes with a bunch of features that make it attractive. My two main concerns are YAST and listening services.
YAST: if you don't know what you are doing, it is not only possible, but quite likely that you will completely screw everything up!
Listening services: there are a number of services with ports opened up for listening that really should not be there in an out of the box install; e.g. rpc and ssh
Ubuntu (current version Karmic): easy to install, secure (only cups listens as a service), configurable but without being too complicated, nice stuff pre-installed and a lot of other software available to install.
Ubuntu happens to be my personal favourite, but as with all things in life beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Bottom line: drop Windows and all its security issues and join the wonderful world of Linux
(btw, I have completely dumped Windows and have no intention of going back!)
BEST for NewBees to LINUX:
http://www.linuxmint.com
LINUX MINT
All setup right 'out of the box'
Fast Simple to understand, an improved version of Ubuntu!
Moderator's Comment : Unnecessary artwork removed. Please make simple, to the point posts
I have to agree. After reading your port about linuxmint I decided to download it and install. The beauty about LinuxMint is that it comes with java and flash pre-installed, so you dont have to go to software manager and download and install it. I am using the xfce version, very fast.