Which Linux Distro is suitable for me?
So, i’ve been searching and downloading the most popular linux distros here in the internet and as far as i can tell i’ve got some answers for you that still don’t know what distro you should call “Home”. ive based myself on this graph and my personal experiences with some distros & desktop environments, obviously if anything ran LXDE it would be faster but im aiming for a good balance so you can enjoy your distro as well.
Lets start by the most popular one:
UBUNTU:
Ubuntu is a very well-known linux distro out there, probably number 1, there is a reason for this, first of all it is stable, and since it’s based in Debian we can pretty much ensure that we can get top quality packages, their packages are recent without being too cutting edge, it’s installation it’s as easy as if you were installing a program, just clicking next a few times and configuring basic things like hour and date and it’s ready to use, it also comes by default with the UNITY desktop environment which is easy to use and get used to, sadly for ubuntu its performance & customization are way too low if you use the Unity Desktop Version, you can only change your theme & icons but not the complete desktop, also UNITY is GNOME 3 based so it consumes its good quantity of resources but don’t be afraid, if you own a 4GB RAM or less memory computer you can always use LUBUNTU, XUBUNTU & Ubuntu MATE which are lightweight desktop environments. As for my own experience while trying this distro in its XFCE, MATE, GNOME & Unity versions i’ve noticed that it has a GREAT community and a fast response also, if you encounter a problem they can answer in minues (Sometimes, this doesn’t mean instant replying), as far as i can tell Lubuntu is the fastest of them all but if you want a balance between performance & customization go fot Ubuntu MATE it is a GNOME 2 based desktop which won’t consume a lot of resources and it also can be customized a lot without having to waste 1 GB of RAM into it you can add docks and other utilities, GTK2 & 3 are supported so don’t worry about your favorite programs.
ARCH LINUX:
Arch linux has it’s upsides and downsides, being the first ones the most dominant, first of all, this is not a very user friendly linux installation since you have to configure everything in here, and if you are not experienced or at least if you do not know what are you doing and mess up…well, things won’t turn for good in most cases. As for the upside, Arch is VERY VERY customizable to the point where you can extract all the juice out of your computer, it also has the title of being a “Rolling” Relase so you don’t neccessarily need to burn a new DVD to install and you can fully do a distribution upgrade to keep your packages up to date. Speaking of which most Arch packets are Cutting Edge so you will get the latest relases. Arch also counts with a Wiki and a community but these 2 will help you in a more “technical” way if you ever encounter a problem. As far as i experienced a well configured Arch install can squeeze all the juice possible out of your RAM & Processor i cannot say LXDE is the best option here since both GNOME and Mate can run evenly and with no horrible Frameskips it uses the pacman package manager which in my opinion is the BEST package managet out there, it installs dependencies and it’s fully functional.
Fedora
Fedora is a well known Linux distribution maintained by Red Hat Enterprise, so just by that you know it is going to be a top quality distro.
But what makes Fedora a great distro for begginers it’s its installation, it is SO EASY to proceed and setup you wont even notice when you are over, on top of that it uses .rpm packages which are different from .deb packages used in Ubuntu, also it has a very good documentation and a great package cutting edge, to add a little cherry on top of the cake. It’s Linus Trovalds favorite Distro.
Now, on top of that i like to make an exception here since Fedora runs ABSOLUTELY good on Gnome 3 Shell, it looks considerably good on gnome2 (MATE now) and xfce but choice is yours.
Debian
Now we go deep into my favorite distro of all time, Debian “The universal operating system” now don’t get me wrong, it is a great operating system for medium-advanced users, but what makes it my favorite it’s that is the parent of most distros and it is simple, lightwheight and efficient in most ways, it uses the .DEB file format and installs them using apt, it has 3 branches, Stable, Testing and Unstable, i personally prefer stable with some backports in there just to add some spice, i like using it with either openbox or xfce. but then again GNOME 3 has also good uses for it too.
Well friends, that’s it for now, stay tuned for more Linux related posts.
(Tux is property of Larry Ewing and the Linux team, i take no credit from him even tho he looks pretty cool)