Thinking of trying a new distro, any recommendations?

[Red Squirrel]

Currently on Linux Mint 17.1. I could go to the latest, or try something else, but I have an itch to reinstall and try something new either way. I find most distros I've tried so far the GUI is often really glitchy in various ways. In this particular distro I find open/save dialogs are very glitchy, it always acts like I'm dragging, so it wants to select more than one file and I have to click/right click all over until I can select just one file and to click ok. There's also another issue where stuff does not redraw properly, ex: that green arrow thing in Firefox when you download, it always stays stuck and I have to maximize/unmaximize the window to make it go away. On a completely other system that is running CentOS 6.8 I also noticed similar glitches in the GUI but it's even worse on that system and I get all sorts of weird error messages related to latency. To be fair CentOS is a server OS so the GUI is probably not really optimized to be used as a desktop. Whatever distro I go with, I might put on that system too.

I've also ran into various issues on various systems where you can totally screw up the task bar if you try to drag something to it. I have a Windows habbit of dragging a file to a folder entry so that it pops up so you can move the file to that folder, but that does not work in Linux, but every time I try it it totally messes up the task bar.

I could go on with weird stuff like that on multiple different systems that I've seen.

In general I'm looking for a distro that will be more stable in this respect and not be so glitchy. I hate the layout/look of the new Gnome so distros based on that is out of the question as well, but open to anything else. How is vanilla Debian? I might actually go with that. Most desktop distros are based off it anyway. Another thing I'id like idealy is one where the packages are up to date. I often run into situations where I need a certain version of a package but the one in the distro is too old. End up with having to hack stuff together such as adding 3rd party repos and that's usually a recipe for other issues.

Also hoping for a distro that will do multi monitors properly, ex: when I open a program or a dialog, I want it to actually go to the monitor it was launched from, not some random location. I tried to do separate X sessions in Mint and that did not work very well, some apps STILL open on wrong monitor. I had to scrap my triple monitor setup because it got really annoying having stuff open on the 1st one when i launched it from the 2nd (middle) one etc. My current setup uses Synergy with two raspberry PIs for the side monitors but that has it's own set of issues such as Synergy randomly crashing or the browser in the RPI randomly crashing but it's been the only way I've found to constrain apps from opening on the wrong screen, as it's essentially 3 separate machines.

I'm leaning towards trying vanilla Debian as my desktop OS, but open towards other suggestions too. Or do I just go with latest Mint?

Oh another glitch I'm trying to avoid but not sure if possible (even Windows does this) is that sometimes the screen does not update all at once if there is lot of movement. Ex: if moving within an image editing program or scrolling a web page, half the screen updates before the other half, then there's like a virtual line in between. Hoping for a distro where this won't happen. But not sure if that's even a software issue, it might be hardware, even my system at work does it. I never noticed it before but now that I did, I notice it on almost any computer I use.

 

[Ottertail]

I just installed manjaro and I am happy with it so far. I wanted something current but still stable.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Never heard of Manjaro I'll have to check it out, it does look quite slick. I just put Mint 18 Cinnamon in a VM, going to play with that for a bit. I might end up going with that. The Mint platform has been half decent stable, I'm hoping simply upgrading to new version will fix the issues I have now. The biggest one is the annoying drag issue in firefox file dialogs. The multi monitor one seems to be a widespread issue and some distros manage it better than others but I have yet to find the perfect one, so think I just need to keep trying different ones and hope I do find it. That or try to dive into the code and fix it myself. I don't imagine it is too hard to do a check on what screen the cursor is on, and have the window/dialog open on that monitor. But not too sure where to start especially on package manager based distros where everything is managed by the package manager.

 

[Sean Kyle]

A random search gave me this: https://www.linux.com/news/best-linux-distros-2016

 

[ControlD]

I have been running Fedora 24 on a spare box for a couple of weeks now and I am quite impressed with it. I actually like it better than the current versions of Mint and Ubuntu.

One of these days I will get around to giving Arch a try as well. It would be nice to have a rolling release. I have never had much luck trying to do in place upgrades with Mint.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Yeah Fedora actually looks pretty nice and has always been quite stable too. I still have a Fedora Core 9 box running... lol. I need to retire that thing. My big issue is the support period is quite short then they pull off all the repos. Though it seems I find myself reinstalling more often than I plan for anyway...

I'm thinking I'm going to go with Mint Cinnimon though, but still open to other options that I can still consider. I think at this point the biggest thing I want to try to get working is a proper multi screen setup so I'll just keep trying distros till I get one that handles it right. Whether it's spanned, or separate X sessions. I would have figured that separate X sessions would FORCE windows to open on the proper monitor, but I tried it in Mint 17.1 and I still had issues with stuff going on wrong screen. But maybe it will be better in 18.

 

[adamantine.me]

A lot of people use Debian as their daily driver, so that might actually be something worth looking into. I sometimes hear of people installing the Gnome desktop environment on top of a Ubuntu install, which would be a solid choice too because you're getting the best of both worlds.

 

[ControlD]

I recently switched my main machine over to Mint 18. I have zero complaints. I still think Fedora 24 is pretty nice as well, but I have using Mint so long I have a hard time switching to anything else for more than a few weeks.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I ended up going to Mint 18 Cinnamon, so far so good, but still in early stages. I do find it lacks certain minor features, like being able to put a different desktop background on each monitor. But I can live with that. Probably run into stuff as I realize I need to do something. My biggest complaint is that there is absolutely no Rawstudio package for it, not even in the PPA, so I had to resort to using a different program, found one called Dark Table. I find the work flow is not quite as good as Raw Studio, but I'll just have to get used to it I guess. I have not gotten to my other programs yet so I'll see how that goes. I don't like installing from source, since after fighting with dependency hell, you still end up with a program that's installed "somewhere" with no shortcut or any kind of GUI related access to it.

I think I may have found a trick for the multi monitor issue, it seems when stuff decides to open on the wrong monitor, it always goes to the left. But I want the centre to be primary or it would be too hard on the neck. So what I did is I moved the left monitor to be below the right one, so the OS now sees the primary as being the left most. It's a bit unnatural to move the mouse that way to get to the left one but I can probably get used to it. So far so good, I no longer have stuff that decides to open on the left monitor instead of the primary.

 

[ControlD]

I would think you could install Raw Studio from this PPA?

https://launchpad.net/~rawstudio/+archive/ubuntu/ppa

I haven't tried myself, but usually Mint will accept Ubuntu repositories.

Haha.. nevermind. I see you tried that already (from a post at LinuxQuestions).

 

[Red Squirrel]

Yeah it says it's not compatible with Xenial.

 

[Azuma Hazuki]

Arch. It's really not as hard as it looks (you want hard, try Gentoo...), it's very fast, for me it's been surprisingly stable, and it has one of the single fastest package managers I've ever seen. Seriously it makes apt look slow-motion. Arch is rather BSD-like, which is another plus.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Playing around with Arch Linux now. I don't see myself using it as my main system any time soon, but I like that it's basically a "build it yourself" distro and teaches you along the way or at least gives you enough details that you can google stuff further, so I'm definitely going to go through all the tutorials and build a system in a VM and play around with it. I did not get that far but I presume there is a way to create an auto installer as well so that I can sorta make my own distro with all the packages/config I want, so I could see myself do that once I come up with a system that I like.

 

[whm1974]

I also use Manjaro as well. it's based off Arch but is much easier to install and setup.
https://manjaro.org/

 

[ControlD]

I also use Manjaro as well. it's based off Arch but is much easier to install and setup.
https://manjaro.org/

I might roll a new VM and give this a shot.

 

[whm1974]

I might roll a new VM and give this a shot.

You will love it.

 

[zubcho]

Stop this distro hopping. You need xfce4 with compiz and you will be fine.

You can install xfce4 on any distro + compiz from source. Try it with debian. I'm currently using mint 18 with xfce and compiz.

 

[whm1974]

Stop this distro hopping. You need xfce4 with compiz and you will be fine.

You can install xfce4 on any distro + compiz from source. Try it with debian. I'm currently using mint 18 with xfce and compiz.

What is wrong with distro hopping?

 

[dave_the_nerd]

What is wrong with distro hopping?

The same 4-5 desktop environments with tweaks, laid over the same 7-8 distros with minor tweaks, which ultimate derive from the same 2-3 "core" distros, with or without systemd. If you're just surfing the web, playing Steam games, and writing term papers, all the distros are basically the same recycled stuff.

So you're not really learning anything or experiencing anything new, you're just obsessing over minor details (that don't matter unless you're actively developing that Distro, or which were also available on the Distro you just ditched, but you didn't know how to get them), trying out new distros to be the "cool" guy who tries out new distros and tells his friends which version of Linux they should install (which is always the latest one they've tried), or you're wasting time because you don't have anything better to do that install and reinstall an OS. (Get a job.)

 

[whm1974]

The same 4-5 desktop environments with tweaks, laid over the same 7-8 distros with minor tweaks, which ultimate derive from the same 2-3 "core" distros, with or without systemd. If you're just surfing the web, playing Steam games, and writing term papers, all the distros are basically the same recycled stuff.

So you're not really learning anything or experiencing anything new, you're just obsessing over minor details (that don't matter unless you're actively developing that Distro, or which were also available on the Distro you just ditched, but you didn't know how to get them), trying out new distros to be the "cool" guy who tries out new distros and tells his friends which version of Linux they should install (which is always the latest one they've tried), or you're wasting time because you don't have anything better to do that install and reinstall an OS. (Get a job.)

I can see your point. I just Distro hopped to Manjaro a bit over a year ago, and this seems to be the best distro for me that I ever ran across. Yes since it is a rolling release, stuff sometimes break, but I'm learning more on how to fix problems that sometimes occur.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

I can see your point. I just Distro hopped to Manjaro a bit over a year ago, and this seems to be the best distro for me that I ever ran across. Yes since it is a rolling release, stuff sometimes break, but I'm learning more on how to fix problems that sometimes occur.

If you're only trying out a new distro every year+, you're not really distro-hopping as I see it.

Which is fine. Install an OS and learn how to use it.

Although for support and maintenance reasons, I tend to support the idea of just installing a "core" distro like Debian or Fedora, and just going with it. But that's because I approach my problems by hitting them with a hammer and accepting pain.

 

[whm1974]

If you're only trying out a new distro every year+, you're not really distro-hopping as I see it.

Which is fine. Install an OS and learn how to use it.

Although for support and maintenance reasons, I tend to support the idea of just installing a "core" distro like Debian or Fedora, and just going with it. But that's because I approach my problems by hitting them with a hammer and accepting pain.

Well I'm consider getting a cheap notebook or SFF system to test different distros so I don't mess up my main system. But I want to test distros that are different not just minor respins.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Well I'm consider getting a cheap notebook or SFF system to test different distros so I don't mess up my main system. But I want to test distros that are different not just minor respins.

That's kinda the core of my argument. While there are differences between distros, none of them are so different that it's worth it to spend time just trying them for the sake of trying them. Unless that's you actual job.

An environment you're familiar and comfortable with is better for your productivity than fumbling your way around an unfamiliar but objectively "best" environment.

 

[whm1974]

That's kinda the core of my argument. While there are differences between distros, none of them are so different that it's worth it to spend time just trying them for the sake of trying them. Unless that's you actual job.

An environment you're familiar and comfortable with is better for your productivity than fumbling your way around an unfamiliar but objectively "best" environment.

You are right. While you and I can handle problems that that may arise from using a rolling release distro like Manjaro, newbies and normal users(such as my dad) can't.

 

[Red Squirrel]

While it's true that most distros are just based off each other sometimes those minor differences can be a big usability advantage/disadvantage to some. Sometimes some things will just refuse to work in one, and work fine in the other too. Or simply work better. Like each one seems to have a different file manager and some are better than others and that can mean a lot to some. Same with the built-in photo viewer app.

I just learned that burning MP3's to an audio CDs in Mint is a near impossible task (did tons of googling and got nowhere), so on a machine that has Mint on it I may have to pick another distro. It had CentOS before and while burning CDs worked, it's GUI was very glitchy, as it's not really meant as a desktop OS. Stuff like header bars were not redrawing properly, and in Audacity it kept defaulting to front mic so had to keep changing it. Lot of minor annoyances like that. So going to Mint fixed most of that stuff. So I may have to play around with distros on that machine until I find one with a decent GUI AND that can also burn CDs. Or keep trying to troubleshoot why I can't do it in Mint. Spent an hour googling and trying stuff the other day. Pretty much trial and error. Keep installing codec related packages and hope for the best.

I still need to try Manjaro actually, keep meaning to do it. I installed it in a VM real quick but did not really play with it much. I'm happy with Mint on my home computer but for the other computer I mentioned that needs to be able to burn CDs I might try a Manjaro live CD to see if I get better luck.

One of these days I still want to experiment with making my own distro, not necessarily from scratch, but something like take an existing one, modify it to my exact needs and see what it takes to make an installer and perhaps live CD. From quick reading it seems Arch Linux is kind of geared towards that, and that's basically what Manjaro did.