this post was submitted on 10 Feb 2024
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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Ubuntu's popularity often makes it the default choice for new Linux users. But there are tons of other Linux operating systems that deserve your attention. As such, I've highlighted some Ubuntu alternatives so you can choose based on your needs and requirements—because conformity is boring.

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[–] DoucheBagMcSwag@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Is Garuda Linux really that good for gamers?

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[–] aarRJaay@lemmy.world 26 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Anyone else notice that the first three are Ubuntu?

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[–] TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world 84 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Imagine putting Manjaro as reliable and cutting edge over, say, Fedora.

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Small complaint but the article is decent as a whole

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[–] ShortN0te@lemmy.ml 26 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Manjaro: Reliable and Cutting-Edge Features

Rarly laughed that hard. Reliably is by defenition wrong. Manjaro delays packages a few days in their main compared to Arch this can cause issues and makes them not compatible with the AUR which one of the most advertised and enabled by default feature.

You can read more about other problems here, https://github.com/kruug/manjarno

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[–] oscardejarjayes@hexbear.net 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)
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[–] Pantherina@feddit.de 2 points 1 year ago (8 children)

Ubuntu is not even good in my opinion. At least not as a normie Distro.

Yes they have lots of docs online but "it is good because people think it is good" is not a good argument.

If you dont like GNOME I guess you will have a harder life anyways, as Distros with KDE are just a really hard task. Like anything stable is not a good idea, I at least reported 30 bugs that will never get backported fixes.

The fact that appimages are broken on Ubuntu is like the only thing that I completely understand and dont care about. Appimages needs to get their stuff together.

I hope many projects will convert from Appimage to Flatpak

https://github.com/trytomakeyouprivate/Appimage-To-Flatpak

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[–] cypherpunks@lemmy.ml 57 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)
[–] survivalmachine@beehaw.org 6 points 1 year ago (5 children)

targeted at regular desktop users

While Slackware and Debian are the oldest still-maintained Linux distros, I don't think either had a desktop-first approach.

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[–] TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world 46 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't think that's particularly wrong, tbh.

The key words being targeted at regular desktop users.

Obviously far from being one of the first distros, or distros with a GUI. But targeted at regular desktop users - i.e. "normies"? Absolutely.

People need to remember how crappy and janky the desktop was before Canonical spearheaded a lot of usability improvements.

If only they had continued along that path :/

[–] lemmyvore@feddit.nl 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

There were lots of distros that tried to target regular users before it. Mandrake/Conectiva/Mandriva, Corel, Mepis, Lindows, Linspire etc. just off the top of my head.

Hell, Lindows came preinstalled on Walmart PCs at some point.

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[–] qaz@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)
[–] vzq@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah, no.

It was one of the first that didn’t make you to want to tear your hair out, I’ll give them that.

[–] TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

That's what I interpreted from the "targeted at regular desktop users" part.

Certainly not one of the first distros. But one of the first that almost any normal person would actually be able to install and use? Absolutely.

There were multiple before it that claimed to be easy for anybody to use, but most of them still weren't by a long stretch.

[–] cypherpunks@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

there were dozens of others in the 11 years between the first and ubuntu

[–] prettybunnys@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

“Targeted at regular desktop users”

[–] cypherpunks@lemmy.ml -1 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] prettybunnys@sh.itjust.works 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I really feel like you’re missing the idea of that sentence deliberately.

What Linux distribution came before Ubuntu that was specifically designed to be user friendly for a non-technical user?

[–] cypherpunks@lemmy.ml 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

What Linux distribution came before Ubuntu that was specifically designed to be user friendly for a non-technical user?

There were a bunch of distros advertising ease of use; several were even sold in physical boxes (which was the style at the time) and marketed to consumers at retail stores like BestBuy years before Ubuntu started.

Here are four pictures of the physical packaging for three of those pre-ubuntu desktop distros designed to be user friendly and marketed to the general public:

Photo of the cardboard packaging for Caldera OpenLinux Another Caldera box Packaging of SuSE 8.1 Mandrake 7.2 packaging

Ubuntu was better than what came before it in many ways, and it deserves credit for advancing desktop Linux adoption both then and now, but it was not "one of the first" by any stretch.

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[–] z3rOR0ne@lemmy.ml 20 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Well as a psychopath, I always recommend beginners start with Gentoo. Guaranteed they won't go back to Mac or Windows. /s

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 0 points 1 year ago

It would of been funnier if you left out the /s

[–] cbarrick@lemmy.world 19 points 1 year ago

By starting the switch to Gentoo, they either learn Linux well enough to never want to go back, or they fubar their system so bad that they can't go back.

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[–] WeAreAllOne@lemm.ee 31 points 1 year ago (8 children)

No one ever recommends OpenSuse....

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It is problematic in my experience. I think it comes down to Suse as a company lacking direction

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[–] drndramrndra@lemmygrad.ml 4 points 1 year ago

Tumbleweed is recommended often here.

I occasionally try out Opensuse since like 2007, but I always find the alternatives better. Why Tumbleweed over Arch, why Leap over Fedora/Debian, why suse over RHEL?

[–] Kualk@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

It is not bad, but slow after Arch.

[–] ricdeh@lemmy.world 16 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I am kind of afraid of the corporate influence on OpenSUSE. Same for the relationship between Ubuntu and Canonical

[–] drndramrndra@lemmygrad.ml 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Is any popular stable distro free from corporate influence aside from Debian?

[–] Adanisi@lemmy.zip 8 points 1 year ago

Not that I'm aware of. Debian is really an outlier, it's strong community and motivation for software freedom is what makes Debian, Debian.

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[–] PoliticalCustard@lemmygrad.ml 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Garuda gets a mention, as a gamer I can highly recommend Garuda, a lot of work has gone into it and it looks great too... especially if you like neon. 🥰

[–] Pogogunner@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

I'm not a fan of all the gamer aesthetics, but Garuda works so well out of the box.

I tend to recommend Linux Mint (cinnamon) for newbies to start with so they can get over their initial shock, and then Garuda when they're more comfortable and want something exciting/better gaming performance

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[–] sentient_loom@sh.itjust.works 8 points 1 year ago

distrowatch.org

[–] caesaravgvstvs@feddit.de 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Fuck, now I wanna distro hop

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[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 7 points 1 year ago (3 children)

This article is actually well written. I might bookmark it to send to people looking to switch.

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[–] cbarrick@lemmy.world 90 points 1 year ago (22 children)

From an engineering perspective, I prefer Debian distros. Apt is the greatest package manager ever built. For a production server, I'd choose Debian or maybe Ubuntu if I needed to pay someone for support.

But for a desktop, Ubuntu kinda sucks. These days, I think I'd recommend Fedora to Linux noobs.

And for my toys at home, I run Arch btw.

[–] sep@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I was fighting rpm hell on redhat for the 3rd or 4th time using red hat linux 5 to 6 or perhaps 6 to 7. When i first installed debian potato on my daily driver. We had 20 ish servers, but the constant hunt for the right combo of rpm's made me distro jump my own machine. A while later i was floored when i could apt-get full-upgrade to the next debian version without rpm hell and almost everything just worked. Never installed another redhat machine and have been using debian + kde ever since. And 99,3% of all servers i maintain are now debian. A few odd ubuntu machines for $$reasons.

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[–] n2burns@lemmy.ca 20 points 1 year ago (3 children)

What about Ubuntu derivatives for desktop? My go to recommendations are Pop! OS and Linux Mint (which I use).

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[–] Sidewalker@lemm.ee 68 points 1 year ago

Heard. Debian in the streets, Arch in the sheets!

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