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What's Been the Best Linux Distro of 2014?

Posted by samzenpus on from the let-the-flamewar-begin dept.

An anonymous reader writes With 23% of the year remaining, Linux Voice has donned flameproof clothing to subjectively examine what it feels have been the best distros of the year so far, including choices for beginners, desktop fashionistas and performance fetishists, before revealing a surprising overall winner.

8 of 303 comments (clear)

  1. Slackware by ArchieBunker · · Score: 2, Informative

    Minimal install footprint meaning no bloat. Install only what you choose plus no systemd bullshit.

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    Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
  2. Mint by uvajed_ekil · · Score: 5, Informative

    Mint has become the leader for home/desktop users. The Ubuntu base lends stability compatibility, while the more complete out-of-the-box experience and homegrown tools Mint offers make it a no-brainer (although I personally use Mint's Debian-based distro). For enterprise use I'd probably stick with RHEL, and perhaps CentOS for in between needs, but Mint just works so well that it has become a truly viable Windows replacement for many tinkerers and average, average people, and those who prefer not to support MS for whatever reason.

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    This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
    1. Re:Mint by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      I don't know anyone who actually uses it

      As for myself and most other Mint users I know, it's pissed off ex-Ubuntu users who felt unheard by/shit-on by Ubuntu. I'm very happy with the change.

    2. Re:Mint by DavidCBillen · · Score: 3, Informative

      Until you want to do a distribution upgrade :(

  3. Re:FreeBSD by uvajed_ekil · · Score: 4, Informative

    FreeBSD is not Linux though.

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    This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
  4. Debian by Randle_Revar · · Score: 5, Informative

    Debian

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    Climate Progress - Hell and High Water
  5. Re:Same as it's been forever. by xvan · · Score: 3, Informative

    Some closed source hardware providers choose them as targets for their products.
    yum is better than apt
    Lots of time is put testing so you don't get nasty surprises on production services that support millionaire businesses.
    Long (really long) term support (and by support I mean security updates).

    On the other hand, It's not a fair comparison, you should compare RHEL against Debian Stable.

  6. Re:Most Linux users just want Unix ... by TyFoN · · Score: 4, Informative

    I run arch on all my workstations/laptops both at home and work. The servers at work run debian.

    I've tried so many times to get freebsd on my computers, some it will work on, but far too often it will kernel panic on ACPI, smp, driver bug etc. Especially on recent computers.

    Graphics/games is another thing.
    Now the most recent have started to implement the proper kernel features for nvidia blob, but it's still not as good as the linux driver, and I can't run steam except via wine.

    Linux just works, that's why I use it.