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Linux.com Announces The Best Linux Distros for 2017 (linux.com)
Friday Linux.com published their list of "what might well be the best Linux distributions to be found from the ever-expanding crop of possibilities... according to task." Here's their winners (as chosen by Jack Wallen), along with a short excerpt of his analysis.
- Best distro for sysadmins : Parrot Linux. "Based on Debian and offers nearly every penetration testing tool you could possibly want. You will also find tools for cryptography, cloud, anonymity, digital forensics, programming, and even productivity."
- Best lightweight distribution: LXLE. "Manages to combine a perfect blend of small footprint with large productivity."
- Best desktop distribution: Elementary OS "I'm certain Elementary OS Loki will do the impossible and usurp Linux Mint from the coveted 'best desktop distribution' for 2017."
- Best Linux for IoT: Snappy Ubuntu Core "Can already be found in the likes of various hacker boards (such as the Raspberry Pi) as well as Erle-Copter drones, Dell Edge Gateways, Nextcloud Box, and LimeSDR."
- Best non-enterprise server distribution: CentOS. "Since 2004, CentOS has enjoyed a massive community-driven support system."
- Best enterprise server distribution: SUSE. "Don't be surprised if, by the end of 2017, SUSE further chips away at the current Red Hat market share."
Wallen also chose Gentoo for "Best distribution for those with something to prove," saying "This is for those who know Linux better than most and want a distribution built specifically to their needs... a source-based Linux distribution that starts out as a live instance and requires you to then build everything you need from source." And surprisingly, he didn't mention his own favorite Linux distro, Bodhi Linux, which he describes elsewhere as "a melding of Ubuntu and Enlightenment".
I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you’re referring to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX.
Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called “Linux”, and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project. There really is a Linux, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use.
Linux is the kernel: the program in the system that allocates the machine’s resources to the other programs that you run. The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. Linux is normally used in combination with the GNU operating system: the whole system is basically GNU with Linux added, or GNU/Linux. All the so-called “Linux” distributions are really distributions of GNU/Linux.
That's the desktop market share. On servers, Linux is market leader, and in IOT, its > 90%.
CentOS is a clone of Red Hat Enterprise Linux without Red Hat support contract. You still get the same updates from RHEL, though usually 2-3 weeks later. A lot of big companies don't care for support (since they can deal with it in-house) and use CentOS which is free.
Best Linux Distro for people who just want to get stuff done: Linux Mint
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
The Website seems fairly low on information - essentially there's a (front) page of marketing which gives no sense as to what the environment is like, and then it's support/buy/involve yourself links.
I moved from Ubuntu to Mint last year and I'm on the verge of going back, partly because Cinnamon is now well supported within Ubuntu, and partly because Mint has some horrible design decisions, from being unable to upgrade in place, to the fact core UI components run Webkit under root (including the login) (I'm not kidding about that, and they don't disable plugins either, so I regularly get to confirm I accept the Adobe Acrobat license on the lockscreen login page because I haven't accepted it under root yet and because the login page loaded Webkit which loaded the Acrobat plugin.)
But... hey, if I'm going to change distro anyway, I'd be curious to know what the distro-of-the-year is like...
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Ease of installation. It saves time not selection and unselecting all the packages. If you won't forget anything, you will waste a lot of time.
Why do the work a second time if somebody already has done it?
There will be people who will use Debian and make something identical or similar, but most people nowadays are not hobbyists tinkering with their OS, not that there is anything wrong with that. Most will want to install and start working with their system, not for their system.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
When I switched to Mint several years ago, I didn't like that they didn't support "upgrading in place". However, one of the reasons I switched to Mint (from Ubuntu) was because I had upgraded so many times in place (7 or 8) that my system wasn't stable and was slowing down. So I made the decision to change my partitions and go with the idea of keeping my base install small, my home directory on a separate partition, etc. My upgrades since then have been very painless and faster!
However, they DO now support upgrading in place, it's called their Package Upgrade. I haven't done it yet, but am on 18 and may upgrade to 18.1 that way. Although I used to be a KDE person (back on Redhat, then SuSE, then Kubuntu) I switched to XFCE many years ago and haven't looked back.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
These types of lists are always biased in a "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" kind of way. I've been using linux for 20 years now and don't really agree with most of their choices. These lists might get someone new started with Linux, but people eventually gravitate towards what works for them once they get their sea legs.
In the beginning, God created Debian. And He saw that it was good. But even good can be improved upon, so God created a help mate for Debian and He named that creature Ubuntu. And Ubuntu was fertile and multiplied and brought forth upon the Earth every distribution that crawled upon the land and swam in the sea below and flew in the air above. And God saw that it was good. Because people like to have choices and Linux is for people... and not just for corporations.
"He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
If there is no 'o' in distribution, then there is no 'i' in distribution either.
Support your local school shooter, give them your firearms.
This article certainly does not reflect what I perceive are the best distros and certainly does not elaborate or go far enough to compare the different capabilities with an extended list of other distros in a matrix.
For me, the proposed comparison criteria would be:
-user able to create customized live thumb image with a reasonable amount of time
-user able to update the packages quickly and easily
-user able to find packages of interest quickly and easily
-user able to create own packages quickly and easily
-desktop agnostic. No default desktop. Users must choose themselves which one they want.
-user documentation up-to-date enough to most relevant and trending Linux Distros issues: security configuration for server and non-server alike, desktop, printer, network, filesystems, media player softwares, peer-to-peer softwares, digital-freedom and anonymity.
Arch IMHO is the best. It covers the above with archiso, pacman, yaourt, kde/gnome/other desktops, archwiki covers how to make packages easily and make them available through "Arch User Repositories"(AUR) and installing them through yaourt.
b2im tool for manjaro was the closest and fastest way to customize a thumb-image, but lacked support for customizing an image with AUR packages. archiso can be customized with AUR packages.
http://www.xcfa.tuxfamily.org/...
Debian Sid is equivalent, but I have classified it as second-best because it takes more time to create & customize a live thumb image especially with an extra persistent partition on the thumb itself. It should be straightforward to do and yet it still is not straightforward to do. live-build takes more than a couple of weeks to customize and it is complex procedure to succeed with both bios and uefi.
Antergos and Manjaro were inspired from Arch. Parrot, Backtrack, Kali, Ubuntu were inspired from Debian BUT ARE NOT DEBIAN. Dare I say a LINUX DISTRO is like a food to be prepared and consumed. If that is the case, which would you prefer depends on your personality. If you prefer to prepare your food yourself, you will go to a grocery store with fresh, unprocessed food products(i.e. Arch/Debian/Fedora), but if you are in a hurry/tired then you could possibly prefer something prepared for you(i.e. Redhat, Ubuntu, Parrot, Kali, Manjaro, Antergos.)
I wouldn't impose my opinion on others to use a particular distro, but I am of the opinion everyone would be healthier by preparing/using the fresh produce and straight from the source: Arch, Debian, Fedora. When you go with the faster food(i.e. Redhat, Ubuntu, Parrot, Kali, Manjaro, Antergos) there are always consequences/constraints, less-recent packages, vendor-lock-in/"take or leave it".
I really, really like Funtoo Linux. I've posted about it in the past.
It's a lot like Gentoo, as its based on Gentoo, built by the original founder of Gentoo. But it has a few subtle differences: - Portage uses git to sync the portage tree instead of rsync (though I think Gentoo back ported this feature). /boot. No mucking about with grub2-mkconfig.
- boot-update. Gentoo lacks this program. It handles updating grub2 and lilo configuration based on the presence of kernels and initrd files in
- systemd is unsupported, though its there if you want to use it. If it breaks, its on you.
I find myself using ArchLinux's wiki more and more these days. It seems like it is almost a binary version of Gentoo/Funtoo in many ways. I've been trying it out in a VM. Not having to compile everything is nice, but lacks tuning dependencies that I am so used to with Funtoo/Gentoo.
I've seen Elementary OS mentioned several times in discussions among unhappy Apple users as a good bail-out option. Those of us who moved from Linux to OS X in the early 2000s, back when OS X did indeed "just work" (particularly compared to the Linux desktop) are now tired of rushed/botched software upgrades and increasingly poor HW offerings. I want a system I can depend on rather than one I can (or have to) fiddle with so I can focus on the things I want/need to be doing with the computer. That's why I'm not looking at a hackintosh solution. Any Elementary OS users want to comment on how this distro is working for them? I'll probably want to install Gnome, which I think is not the out-of-the-box configuration.
manages to *get stuff done* with Windows ?
And they don't spend a lot of *time* on their OS, they just somehow, god alone knows how, manage to live with the defaults in the OS ?
and it doesn't bother them cause the have like, say, 50,000 things that are more important then worrying about some minor problem in an OS ?
reminds me of joel on software: the real expert always leaves the OS/software at default as the real expert uses a lot of diff computers, and the default is the only thing that makes sense .....
must be a corally for OS: the real expert uses windows cause a real expert is dealing with a lot of other people, and most of them are using windows, so it makes sense to learn what people are using.....
course, you have nothing bettter to do then configure your os, cause god knows, RAM is so $ that it is worth hours of your time to make the OS run on less ram, hey, more power to you; most of you who do this, probably a lot better for society that you are doing this then , say, thinking about firearms and the people who you imagine have harmed you
Started with Gentoo - awesome learning experience. Harder to maintain in a production environment especially if you're lazy like me.
On the desktop went thru various distros - Ubuntu, SolydXK, Mint, Manjaro/Arch and am now using Korora/Fedora. Have been very surprised at how well Korora works - always avoided Fedora for whatever reason.
Tried Elementary OS a few years ago and liked the look but the packages just weren't there and some things were broken. No doubt things are better but I've moved on.
LXLE looks cool especially for older tech - I like the LXDE and LXQT DEs a lot - simple and old school windows-like.
CentOS seems a little outdated for my tastes but it works well enough especially in environments that are fragile. Using Ubuntu LTS for most of my server stuff - for me it has been the easiest to maintain and keep current with a great range of compatible devices and packages.
Haven't tried Parrot Linux yet but will check it out - have used Kali & BackBox.
i moved to a\manjaro thats based on arch and never looked back everything is faster then anything Ubuntu based and never a issue with being stable.
For one thing systemD is not a file system
Not yet, so shut up and don't give them any ideas.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
I want a system I can depend on rather than one I can (or have to) fiddle with so I can focus on the things I want/need to be doing with the computer. That's why I'm not looking at a hack-in-tosh solution. Any Elementary OS users want to comment on how this distro is working for them? I'll probably want to install Gnome, which I think is not the out-of-the-box configuration. Also we at Noavard use Linux as our web server, in Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP architecture.
I write about technoloty and advanced computing in Noavard, I place for pros.