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whm1974
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What's the most problem free Distro you have used?

Fri Apr 22, 2016 6:19 am

I have been using a lot of Distros over the years and some of them I had all kinds of problems with. The one I'm using now, Manjaro has to be the least problematic one that I have hopped to. It is also very stable for a rolling distro.

The last one I used, Xubuntu was buggy as hell. And Linux Mint didn't have in place upgrades.

So which Distro is problem free for you?
 
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Re: What's the most problem free Distro you have used?

Fri Apr 22, 2016 6:27 am

No distro is problem free, and no one distro is right for all Linux users.

I mostly run Kubuntu. Highly configurable (so I can customize it to my liking), and I'm very familiar with it at this point (so I know where most of the pitfalls are).
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whm1974
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Re: What's the most problem free Distro you have used?

Fri Apr 22, 2016 6:34 am

just brew it! wrote:
No distro is problem free, and no one distro is right for all Linux users.

Well both statements are very true. And no Desktop Environment is right for all user either.
 
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Re: What's the most problem free Distro you have used?

Fri Apr 22, 2016 6:48 am

openSUSE
 
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Re: What's the most problem free Distro you have used?

Fri Apr 22, 2016 7:21 am

I've installed Mint on a couple of machine and seems to just work.

Mostly used for web browsing, email, homework, netflix etc. etc. by teenagers and parents wanted to keep them out of trouble.

I usually use xfce since it seems to be lightweight and simple and this helps with battery life.

So far installed on 6 laptops that were running windows xp, vista, win 8, seems fine and never had to hunt down a codec.
Kids don't mind having to reboot for updates when necessary and many updates work without a reboot anyway.

Only had one machine screw up (hd failure swapped for an ssd) and all I had to do was reinstall and they got everything back since they were using google docs and chrome.
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Re: What's the most problem free Distro you have used?

Fri Apr 22, 2016 7:22 am

I don't have a lot of linux experience, but I second Manjaro. After trying a bunch this year, it's what I've settled on as a base for VMs running different things on a headless server. Easy to work with, rarely hit any issues, and the available packages (and their up to date nature, it's like most distros are manned by people who only update their phone apps 4 times a year) for Manjaro specifically but also compatibility with the much larger AUR are great.

Ubuntu, Mint, and a couple others all just gave me grief. Don't know if the blame was with them or some element of the unRAID OS that was playing host to them, but didn't really matter. Manjaro just worked.
 
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Re: What's the most problem free Distro you have used?

Fri Apr 22, 2016 7:28 am

Debian.

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Re: What's the most problem free Distro you have used?

Fri Apr 22, 2016 7:36 am

Fedora, RHEL/CentOS, Scientific Linux. Red Hat has a really good release engineering teams, and their work is solid.
 
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Re: What's the most problem free Distro you have used?

Fri Apr 22, 2016 7:52 am

My vote is Linux Mint. I mostly use the MATE flavor, but Cinnamon has also been solid for me. I've had CentOS and openSUSE machines melt down from bad updates and/or upgrades in the past.

At the moment, I think the Ubuntu 16.04, both Unity and MATE, need some time to mature. Understandable since it only left Beta yesterday.
 
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Re: What's the most problem free Distro you have used?

Fri Apr 22, 2016 8:12 am

I can't really say since I am a windows user........but my moms old pc had XP, and between her and all the grandkids on it, things were getting messed up, plus no longer supported.

Put Linux Mint on it and seems to be good so far (from a guy with 0 Linux and 0 CLi experience), not sure if it was Mate or Cinnamon, looks like a Mac gui. Was a bit of a learning curve with the gui and how things were named, but managed to get through it, and even got the HP printer installed lol. (no webcam though)

I know how the pro Linux people love the power of the CLi, but until Linux gets to the point where there is a truly dumbed down desktop version where everything is just a double click, I can't really see it gaining "real" market share. And that's too bad, cause then it would get more support, be more compatible and then there would be a "real" alternative to windows for the layman windows user.
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whm1974
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Re: What's the most problem free Distro you have used?

Fri Apr 22, 2016 8:28 am

anotherengineer wrote:
I can't really say since I am a windows user........but my moms old pc had XP, and between her and all the grandkids on it, things were getting messed up, plus no longer supported.

Put Linux Mint on it and seems to be good so far (from a guy with 0 Linux and 0 CLi experience), not sure if it was Mate or Cinnamon, looks like a Mac gui. Was a bit of a learning curve with the gui and how things were named, but managed to get through it, and even got the HP printer installed lol. (no webcam though)

I know how the pro Linux people love the power of the CLi, but until Linux gets to the point where there is a truly dumbed down desktop version where everything is just a double click, I can't really see it gaining "real" market share. And that's too bad, cause then it would get more support, be more compatible and then there would be a "real" alternative to windows for the layman windows user.

I have gotten two people to switch to it and another to try it out for awhile, and none of them are computer geeks.
 
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Re: What's the most problem free Distro you have used?

Fri Apr 22, 2016 8:44 am

Semplice (or Debian).(It is possible to get Semplice from Debian by adding a repo and downloading a few packages. All core packages are the same)
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Re: What's the most problem free Distro you have used?

Fri Apr 22, 2016 8:58 am

Was running Mint MATE for a few years very few issues. More recently I've switched to Kubuntu and I've been very happy with that.
 
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Re: What's the most problem free Distro you have used?

Fri Apr 22, 2016 9:16 am

w76 wrote:
Ubuntu, Mint, and a couple others all just gave me grief. Don't know if the blame was with them or some element of the unRAID OS that was playing host to them, but didn't really matter. Manjaro just worked.

Impossible to say for sure if unRAID OS was responsible, but using a less common virtualization platform certainly introduces more variables.

Flatland_Spider wrote:
Fedora, RHEL/CentOS, Scientific Linux. Red Hat has a really good release engineering teams, and their work is solid.

RHEL (and downstream derivatives) are certainly solid, but Fedora often feels half-baked and the short support cycles for each release are inconvenient. Fedora == too much churn for my tastes.

anotherengineer wrote:
I know how the pro Linux people love the power of the CLi, but until Linux gets to the point where there is a truly dumbed down desktop version where everything is just a double click, I can't really see it gaining "real" market share. And that's too bad, cause then it would get more support, be more compatible and then there would be a "real" alternative to windows for the layman windows user.

Unless you're running bleeding edge hardware (which can have spotty driver support) it really is there already. The main obstacle is compatibility/availability of mainstream commercial applications (games, MS Office, CAD packages, etc.) which are crucial to many users' workflows.
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Re: What's the most problem free Distro you have used?

Fri Apr 22, 2016 9:36 am

Manjaro. Least issues and those I've had were fixable.

With Mint, Ubuntu, Debian I suffered a far worse dll-hell equaivalent with ppa's and repositories than Windows ever gave me.
 
whm1974
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Re: What's the most problem free Distro you have used?

Fri Apr 22, 2016 10:31 am

boing wrote:
Manjaro. Least issues and those I've had were fixable.

With Mint, Ubuntu, Debian I suffered a far worse dll-hell equaivalent with ppa's and repositories than Windows ever gave me.

To be honest, I thought I would have issues with using a rolling distro, but haven't run into any so far.
 
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Re: What's the most problem free Distro you have used?

Fri Apr 22, 2016 11:03 am

I don't do desktop Linux, but I have some experience with servers.

- CentOS/RHEL 6.x. (Don't get me started on 7.x). The recent introduction of the IUS repository is awesome for web sysadmins.
- Ubuntu 14 LTS. (Don't get me started on Debian - though not for stability reasons)
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Re: What's the most problem free Distro you have used?

Fri Apr 22, 2016 11:12 am

I don't have much experience with linux but so far I've had the most success with Linux Mint, specifically the MATE variant. It's based on Ubuntu but they're more permissive with what gets shipped with the distro in an effort to make it work out of the box better than Ubuntu does (or did?)

I hope to be installing Ubuntu 16.04 LTS on an HTPC this weekend (pending arrival of the OS drive), I don't expect it to behave much differently from Mint for my purposes
 
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Re: What's the most problem free Distro you have used?

Fri Apr 22, 2016 11:29 am

boing wrote:
With Mint, Ubuntu, Debian I suffered a far worse dll-hell equaivalent with ppa's and repositories than Windows ever gave me.


Third-party repos need to handled with care, especially those that replace stuff shipped with the base OS, or things will get messy really quick.

just brew it! wrote:
RHEL (and downstream derivatives) are certainly solid, but Fedora often feels half-baked and the short support cycles for each release are inconvenient. Fedora == too much churn for my tastes.


The short release cycle and being RH's beta platform are valid criticisms. The short release cycle is blunted a little bit by each version having twelve months of support, so it's not an immediate need to upgrade each time.

People need to accept Fedora is Red Hat's testing ground. To see where RH is going, use Fedora. I'm very RH-centric, so this works well for me.

anotherengineer wrote:
I know how the pro Linux people love the power of the CLi, but until Linux gets to the point where there is a truly dumbed down desktop version where everything is just a double click, I can't really see it gaining "real" market share. And that's too bad, cause then it would get more support, be more compatible and then there would be a "real" alternative to windows for the layman windows user.


A lot of work has been put into that, and all the GUI tools are there to keep people from having to touch the command line.

A very nice Linux desktop is ElementaryOS. It is, unfortunately or fortunately depending on your outlook, based on Ubuntu, but it's desktop is well put together. It reuses a lot of the Gnome3 ecosystem, but that's not a bad thing.
 
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Re: What's the most problem free Distro you have used?

Fri Apr 22, 2016 12:04 pm

For desktop usage, Linux Mint. Definitely been the least problematic for me, even crappy Broadcom wireless drivers just worked. I've hopped between OpenSUSE, Ubuntu, Debian, ElementaryOS, Fedora etcetera. I've always came back to Mint when I just want something to work.
 
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Re: What's the most problem free Distro you have used?

Fri Apr 22, 2016 12:26 pm

morphine wrote:
(Don't get me started on Debian - though not for stability reasons)

Do you not like Debian for the toxic dev community or is it something else?
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Re: What's the most problem free Distro you have used?

Fri Apr 22, 2016 12:34 pm

DrDominodog51 wrote:
morphine wrote:
(Don't get me started on Debian - though not for stability reasons)

Do you not like Debian for the toxic dev community or is it something else?

Debian: security through obsolescence.

The software versions are often so absurdly old that they stop being useful. Yes, and the community is particularly penis-shaped.
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whm1974
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Re: What's the most problem free Distro you have used?

Fri Apr 22, 2016 12:49 pm

morphine wrote:
DrDominodog51 wrote:
morphine wrote:
(Don't get me started on Debian - though not for stability reasons)

Do you not like Debian for the toxic dev community or is it something else?

Debian: security through obsolescence.

The software versions are often so absurdly old that they stop being useful. Yes, and the community is particularly penis-shaped.

That is why I only used it for a short time before dumping it.
 
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Re: What's the most problem free Distro you have used?

Fri Apr 22, 2016 12:59 pm

A new Linux thread by WHM? Gasp!

I've never really had any issues with Ubuntu to be honest. I don't do anything particularly crazy though, and there is always documentation (official or otherwise) for what I want to do.
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Re: What's the most problem free Distro you have used?

Fri Apr 22, 2016 1:26 pm

whm1974 wrote:
morphine wrote:
Debian: security through obsolescence.

The software versions are often so absurdly old that they stop being useful. Yes, and the community is particularly penis-shaped.

That is why I only used it for a short time before dumping it.


Read the FAQ about why they do this.

Q: Why are you fiddling with an old version of that package?

The most important guideline when making a new package that fixes a security problem is to make as few changes as possible. Our users and developers are relying on the exact behaviour of a release once it is made, so any change we make can possibly break someone's system. This is especially true in case of libraries: make sure you never change the Application Program Interface (API) or Application Binary Interface (ABI), no matter how small the change is.

This means that moving to a new upstream version is not a good solution, instead the relevant changes should be backported. Generally upstream maintainers are willing to help if needed, if not the Debian security team might be able to help.

In some cases it is not possible to backport a security fix, for example when large amounts of source code need to be modified or rewritten. If that happens it might be necessary to move to a new upstream version, but this has to be coordinated with the security team beforehand.
--Debian security FAQ (https://www.debian.org/security/faq)

Keeping the ABI and API stable goes a long way towards getting rid of problems, and it cuts down on the work of verifying everything is working like it's supposed to before it goes into production.

I understand the urge for deploying new code, but realize the trade off if going to be more release engineering work. The new code is going to have to be verified and problems/regressions fixed, or accepted, before it can be released into production. Most organizations don't have the knowledge, manpower, and/or will/discipline to run something like Gentoo in production, so they rely on a distro that will do that work for them, like RH, Debian, or SUSE.
 
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Re: What's the most problem free Distro you have used?

Fri Apr 22, 2016 2:35 pm

Eh, I don't think anybody, even the haters, will question Debian's philosophy in itself. It makes perfect sense.

I'll just argue that the balance between stable/new isn't there.
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Re: What's the most problem free Distro you have used?

Fri Apr 22, 2016 2:39 pm

Somehow, I couldn't get CentOS to be stable on the desktop. Something with nvidia drivers and the window manager.

Across all desktop OSes, I'd probably say that OS X was the most stable, followed by Windows, followed by Ubuntu, then Mint (again, desktop managers, Cinnamon can be buggy IMO), then CentOS (if you want a GUI and aren't on Intel graphics, that is).
 
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Re: What's the most problem free Distro you have used?

Fri Apr 22, 2016 2:49 pm

The last most problem free Linux Distro for me was Fedora followed by Ubuntu. I have wanted to check up on CentOS, Arch Linux, and Gentoo.
Last edited by biffzinker on Fri Apr 22, 2016 2:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: What's the most problem free Distro you have used?

Fri Apr 22, 2016 2:50 pm

Chrome OS.
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Re: What's the most problem free Distro you have used?

Fri Apr 22, 2016 2:54 pm

I forget about Chrome OS (thanks bthylafh,) so actually Chrome OS then Fedora, and Ubuntu.
How about Android considering the Linux Kernel for problem free distro?
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