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Best Linux Distribution (linuxjournal.com)
Linux Journal: We started things off with Best Linux Distribution, and nearly 10,000 readers voted. The winner was Debian, with many commenting "As for servers, Debian is still the best" or similar. One to watch that is rising in the polls is Manjaro (7 percent), which is independently based on the Arch Linux. Manjaro is a favorite for Linux newcomers and is known for its user-friendliness and accessibility. And, now for the top three LJ winners: Debian (33 percent), openSUSE (12 percent), and Fedora (11 percent).
Best Linux Distribution?
Well, that's one way to start a, cough, cough *debate* ... now where did I leave my flame resistant suit?
It's like asking what the best car is? Are you trying to transport 8 people, or 5 sheets of drywall? Asking what the best linux distro is silly and only adds to the confusion for those not familiar with linux. Personally I'm a huge fan of Debian and it's my go to unless I need some speciality distro. If someone asked me for a recommendation of install Linux for the first time they've ever done it on a laptop, Debian might not be my answer. I understand the need for Top 10 lists, and ranking systems in our lives. It makes for the best click bait. Best linux distro is just something not needed. One of the best things about Linux is the distro's can be drastically different and fit different needs. Why do we need to try to narrow it down to one?
Sent from my TARDIS
...After Mint I never looked back.
Windows 10 gives me hurdles of issues.
Mint Linux? Works, and works - and works. Love it.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
My favorite is Alpine because it is systemd-free, light-weight, and security-focused.
An interface that never changes? Yes please.
Twinstiq, game news
I guess I'll have to manually compile my own list...
It all depends on what I'm trying to do with it.
Desktop, Laptop, Server, Router, DVR, NAS, Phone, IOT device?
I don't see much to argue about. Different uses and different users have different needs and preferences. As sqorbit said, the question itself is silly. Like asking "what vehicle is best?" - kinda depends on whether you want to haul 10,000 pounds of cargo, race a slalom, or impress your date. Sometimes a semi truck is the right thing for the job, sometimes a motorcycle is.
I run different distributions for different roles, and other people will prefer other distros for those same roles because they have different preferences. For example my "default" distribution for general computing is CentOS. One reason I choose CentOS is simply because it's the one I'm most familiar with, having used that lineage for 15 years under various names. Someone else might choose Debian or Ubuntu for the same reason - it's the one they know best.
A major difference to consider for desktop / laptop use is whether you prefer cutting edge new features or stability and reliability. In the Redhat / CentOS realm, Fedora is cutting edge, Redhat / CentOS is stable. Neither is right or wrong, better or worse, it just depends on what you want. So instead of spending time trying to find "the best", spend that time asking "what are my needs and which fits my needs best?"
Linux is in far too many places for "a" "best" distro.
But it's not hard to pick candidates for the best for specific purposes.
Debian is a pessimized distribution. It's compiled for the worst possible case. It has a filesystem layout guaranteed to cause conflicts between packages and they've not bothered to resolve those except where it's "noticeable". The default disk layout is sub-optimal. It puts ideology over getting anything done.
I'm not impressed by the others, either.
Frankly, I'm horrified by the state of Linux distributions. That people voted Debian up is not a surprise, however, because nobody expects the best from their computers any more. I used to run three MUDs on a 16 MHz 386SX, in addition to a mail server, DNS server, modem pool and an instance of X. I could compile GateD or Perl in the background without interfering with anyone's work. Did it do less? Well, it had just as many fonts in LaTeX, so I could still do all the DTP that Libre Office can do. Admittedly, I couldn't WYSIWYG it but nobody does that with LaTeX anyway and anyone who does it for regular documents is paying far too much attention to presentation and not enough to content.
(I forget where I saw the article on PowerPoint, but it argued that this emphasis on presentation was endangering R&D, promoting really bad ideas over much better ones, and was responsible for endangering the modern economy and several western democracies. Ok, maybe they overstated the threat to the economy, since you have to have one to endanger.)
Modern Linux is not as fast because of poor design choices by distros. We have no Linux Desktop because of even worse design choices by distros.
https://itvision.altervista.or...
These problems are THEIR fault (and the fault of OSDL's closed-door meetings with vendors). Yes, in almost every respect, Windows is worse. But Windows has mindshare and enough money to afford to be worse. Microsoft should have been broken up in 1998 when it was ordered to do so by the courts, but the appeals court reversed that - probably under government pressure - and we have to live with the fact that we're competing against Sauron.
And, yes, GET OFF MY LAWN!
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I'm sharing my opinion: I think Debian is still king because of mostly 3 key areas it shines: simplicity, choice and community support.
Ubuntu thrived for some years on Deb's back, as it brought its simplicity front and center, all wrapped up in tried and true UI choices with Gnome (2) and Xorg (eventually birthing its own now defunct attempts at GUI - Unity, and dserver - MIR), and they spiced it up by pulling a RedHat on the support part: "hey, we got all the good things of Debian 6 months later, bicuzz pro QA and commercial level polish yadayada". Choice was, barely, still there, through different flavoured ISOs ranging from GUI preference to architectures and whatnot, and naming each individually for branding purposes, something typical from consumer-grade software.
It was well and good, until QA and polish stopped losing focus to marketing and stupid endeavours like dethroning Android or the tablet "market".
Like many, I was the kind who believed [insert letter]Ubuntu-like flavouring was essential in a distro. But now, in all honesty, I believe there are exactly 3 separations a distro really, truly needs - to GUI or not to GUI (Desktop vs server/headless), net-install vs 5 DVDs with all the internet in 'em bicuzz Africa and pacific Islands; and obviously, if you can live without compiling (most of us do), architecture. Release-wise, there should still be LTS, stable and, well, straight-from-the-chunk, but those are a matter of politics involved and not exactly "static" choices, such as the afforementioned architecture, server/desktop-bound or www-availability. Debian follows all these principles, and packs each flavour with exactly what they need.
The thing Debian makes best though is not their choice of flavouring, but the way they pass control onto you, the user. From the simply amazing installer:- you want a GUI? Pick from this not-so-verbose, yet essential list. You wanna continue this installation from ssh? Kewl, install ssh now, set up basic drivers, network and creds, and you're good to go. Do you want that graphical install instead? Maybe you want the ncurses one bicuzz you fancy them Nvidia GPUs which won't work until you can wget them from closedsource.nvidiacorp.bad.org ? Install gparted for all-you-can-eat partition choice. I'm not even getting on the REALLY advanced stuff.
Systemd, grub, dpkg, so straightforward, no complications. Aptitude and that god-send APT. Debian has the tools to get everyone NOT thinking too hard on stuff like dependency management, but still make an effort, ever feeling in control if need be. Updating, and UPGRADING are a breeze, both for individual packages and the distribution itself. Unnatended, or even hot upgrades work as intended and crash much less than most others - something only achieved with a very deep level of organization on the core development. Migrations to new releases are easy. Migrations to new machines are feasible without dedicated backup tools (although they are great if you can get them configured properly), and even when you have a problem, it's usually recoverable with a Google search or 2.
And the thing I love most about Debian, pretty much the same thing that makes me still love Windows: it doesn't fail on 95% the hardware people want to get it working. To y'all OS developers out there - packaging your distributions with the "bare minimum" of drivers is NOT that great a feature when you want your software to have the support a stable OS deserves (*cough* Archlinux*cough) - if you don't have a community large enough ABLE TO BOOT your OS effortlessly, there won't be a community to WANT to give back, and will end up with LACKING community support - read: death sentence in FOSS (well, unless you're RedHat).
It's that simply really. If a critical mass doesn't get to even install your OS successfully, you won't ever get the traction you need for it to be mainstream. But hey, maybe that's not what you want...
Getouttahere!
Ive noticed this poll does not take into account Linux enthusiast community activity and for that im truly offended. How can you enjoy a debian or fedora properly if you've never taken the time to learn and appreciate the minutia of linux?
My personal setup --which i know slashdotters will find more than substantial in its refinement-- is a punch-card copy of Linux from Scratch operating on a 1986 Teddy Ruxpin with a custom 4.15 kernel, emulating the disk elevators from the 2.2 kernel, and of course operating within a Docker/Rancher/Kubernetes/Mom's spaghetti abstraction layer. Dont worry, I'm always keen to run the Ruby/node.js implementation of this kernel for mission critical applications such as my custom Teddy Ruxpin compiled drivers for the Ge Signa HD magnetic resonance imaging machine. Mouse support can be found in my Arduino/openRISC implementation using a small shopping cart packed with old Tamagochi's. as one would typically come to expect for performance, they run Go drivers sandboxed in a Rust framework. Teddy Ruxpin is, without a doubt, the only hardware true Linux fans should be using in 2018
Good people go to bed earlier.
Every other distro is illegal.
Wheel of Time: Book by Book and Sumview (summary review) Bigdady92 style: http://bigdady92.blogspot.com/
No systemd and it does all the things I want. In particular, it let's me run me-tv, which doesn't run well on ubuntu because of something to do with gui libraries. (Each side blames the other last I checked, which I admit was quite awhile ago.) Before Devuan, I had to run me-tv on Linux Mint, which is a very good distro (if you're comfortable with systemd, which I'm not.)
In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice they're different. (Yogi Berra & A. Einstein)