best Linux distro

[clone]

anyone have any opinions on what's a solid reliable Linux version currently out, will be putting it on my core 2 duo box.

[Hammer_Time]

Ubuntu FTW!

Mint 13 is awesome ( based off Ubuntu ) but is new and unstable unfortunately:

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/2 ... t-13/11110

2012's Best Linux desktop: Linux Mint 13

Summary: The Linux Mint distribution keeps getting better and better with its own take on GNOME, the Cinnamon Linux desktop

By Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols for Linux and Open Source | May 30, 2012

The very popular Linux distribution, Mint, has a new version Linux Mint 13, Maya , and a new take on the GNOME 3.x desktop interface: Cinnamon 1.4 . The result is, in my opinion, the best Linux desktop for experienced users to date.

Not everyone will agree with me. They'll find Mint's other default desktop MATE to be much more their speed. MATE is a fork of that old Linux desktop favorite, GNOME 2.x . While I haven't looked at the MATE edition of GNOME closely, other Linux reviewers, like Jim Lynch, have and Lynch likes what he's seen of Mint 13 paired with MATE .

Setting up Mint 13: 2012's Best Linux desktop

Even with the little work I've done with MATE though I can see what GNOME 2.x fans will like it. It's a very clean desktop and it feels and works like a natural extension of GNOME 2. GNOME fans who abandoned GNOME after the annoying changes in GNOME 3.x for Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment (LXDE) will want to give Mint with MATE a try. With MATE, GNOME 2.x is back.

That said, I prefer Cinnamon myself. Cinnamon, which is remindful of GNOME 2.x, is built on Clutter and Gnome 3. I find it more attractive and I like its features. For example, the menu includes drag and drop support. With that, besides just being move icons from the menu to the desktop, I can add them to panel launchers, favorites, and reorder my favorites. I can also right-click the menu to use the menu editor to change edit the main menu itself. It's pretty, gives me great control over how my desktop looks and works.

Another great feature is Cinnamon's new Expo mode is. Expo gives you great control over your workspaces. You can choose how many workspaces to use and drag and drop applications to each workspace. It's a powerful tool but as easy to use as Mac OS X Lion's Mission Control and Spaces.

Much as I'd like to recommend Cinnamon for everyone though, I can't. As Mint's own developers admit that while, "Cinnamon is among the sleekest and most modern looking environments [and] features innovative features and emphasis on productivity with traditional desktop metaphors, it also has several problems. These are:

Cons:

Cinnamon requires 3D acceleration and might not work well for you, depending on your graphics card and/or drivers.
Cinnamon is brand new and unfortunately not yet as stable as more matures and established desktops such as MATE, KDE or Xfce.
Cinnamon relies on Gnome 3 and Clutter, which are also both brand new and going through rapid transformations.
Of course, you can just switch between MATE and Cinnamon. One of Mint's new features is an improved version of the old Gnome Display Manager: MDM. With MDM, you can pick which GUI to boot into, configure them, set up themes for them, and set up remote, automatic, and timed logins. There may be display/login manager with more features out there, but I honestly don't know what it could be though.

For me, however, Cinnamon works just fine. I tested Mint 13 with Cinnamon on two systems. The first was one of my workhorse Dell Inspiron 530S. This system is powered by a 2.2-GHz Intel Pentium E2200 dual-core processor with an 800-MHz front-side bus. This PC has 4GBs of RAM, a 500GB SATA (Serial ATA) drive, and an Integrated Intel 3100 GMA (Graphics Media Accelerator) chip set. I also put it to work on my new Lenovo ThinkPad T520 laptop. This, much more up-to-date computer boasts a 2.5GHz Intel Core i5 Processor, 4GBs of RAM, a 500GB hard drive and an integrated Intel HD Graphics 3000 processor. On both systems, the old and new, Linux Mint and Cinnamon ran flawlessly.

Installing Mint, as always, is a snap. All you need do is download the Mint ISO , burn it to a CD, DVD, or USB stick and then re-boot your computer with it and follow the instructions. On my PCs, the entire process took less than half-an-hour. Mint will run on pretty much any PC. It requires only 512MBs of RAM, but runs better with at least 1GB of memory.

The only annoying thing about the process is you can't do an in-place update of Mint 13 from Mint 12 or any other Linux distribution. That's by design. Mint's developers feel that you'll avoid out of date software incompatibilities by forcing you to do a fresh install. That's true, but it also means you may need to back up and restore your home directories and files. I did this by backing them up to an attached USB drive.

Moving on to the operating system itself, Mint 13 is based on Ubuntu 12.04 . I like this version of Ubuntu with its Unity interface as well. In particular I think Ubuntu 12.04 is great for users who aren't computer savvy. But, I'm a Linux pro. I like operating systems that enable me do decide exactly what I want it to do and how it's going to do it. If you're a power user too, then you'll like the taste of Mint.

Beneath the desktop, you'll find a Linux 3.2 kernel. Mint, like most Linux distributions, is still using ext4 for its file system.

Above that foundation, in applications, you'll find the usual Linux distribution goodness: LibreOffice 3.5.2 for office work, Firefox 12 for the Web browser; GIMP 2.6.12 for graphics; Thunderbird 12.01 for e-mail; and Pidgin 2.10.3 for IM. I'm not crazy about the choices of Thunderbird, I much prefer Evolution for e-mail or Firefox over Chrome.

The default software choice is no big deal though since Mint's Software Manager makes adding new programs a snap. The one quirk here is that after you install the program from the Software Manager the screen doesn't show it as being installed. You need to leave the program installation screen and come back to it before you'll see that your software was indeed installed. It's not a big bug, but it's a bit of a nuisance and I can see someone thinking they really hadn't installed a program when they've actually done so.

As has long been the case with Mint, and it's first claim to fame, this is one Linux distribution that comes ready to deal with proprietary video and audio codexes such as Flash, MP3 and DVDs. Ironically, thanks to including VLC Media Player 2.01, Linux Mint plays DVDs better than Windows 8 will. You see, Mint comes ready to play DVDs. In Windows 8, DVD playback is an extra-cost item.

It's not any of these components by themselves that really impress me. I mean they're all really good. But, what really makes Mint special is how all of them are brought together into one, complete whole. As far as I'm concerned, Mint 13 really is the best Linux distribution so far of 2012. Give it a try yourself. I think you may agree.

http://www.linuxmint.com/rel_maya_whatsnew.php



Cinammon is awesome but so new it can be unstable ( compared to older interfaces ) so therefore unsuitable for you, so just go with tried and true Ubuntu...

You could try Mint 13 since it is so easy to install, if you encounter any problems then just format the drive and install regular Ubuntu...just a thought...

[clone]

I downloaded Ubuntu last night then noticed it's 64bit isn't recommended and it's got AMD64 in the title.

going to try and install it off a USB flash drive.

[Stupify]

get Xubuntu instead of Ubuntu. X is a bit less resource hungry. i am using X to host my NAS filesystem within a Virtual machine.

[Hammer_Time]

I smell some FUD here! :

http://www.linuxtoday.com/infrastructur ... duntu.html

[Sauron_Daz]

Many more in the alphabet to put before ubuntu...

[clone]

ok I'm trying to figure this one out.... I don't want to install Xubuntu from a CD I want to do it from a USB flash drive if possible.

additionally is Xubuntu compatible with SSD drives?... I've got an Intel 520 in the system I'll be using or am I stuck installing it onto a conventional drive.

if I had to go with a CD and conventional hard drive I won't be bothering, I'll just go Windows 7 or 8 but figured before I got the new OS I'd give linux another chance on a much newer system than the last one I installed it on.

[Hammer_Time]

Yes, Ubuntu , and therefore Xubuntu which is based off Ubuntu, supports SSD and the TRIM function ( although you have to enable that ):

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions ... ns-505390/

The difference between ubuntu and xubuntu on new(ish) hardware is tough to quantify. Say you're carrying 10 kilos of books while trying to walk 20 kilometers. If you reduce the weight of the books to 5 kilos, will you be able to walk faster? Probably you will, but will it make much of a difference? Benchmark it and see. My guess is it won't make a huge difference, but you will always see things performing slightly better under xubuntu due to the smaller resources XFCE should use compared to Gnome/KDE.

I don't use ubuntu myself, but changing from ubuntu to xubuntu is probably similiar to changing debian stable to testing or unstable. You would have to edit the apt sources.lst file, changing all the ubuntu to xubuntu, then do apt-get update and apt-get dist-upgrade. That could get ugly however. It would be cleaner to remove Gnome and replace it with XFCE, but I don't know if that might break some things. You should google that and/or wait for the advice of a buntu expert.

There is no internal software difference between any of the buntu family. The only difference is in the wrapper they come in. The core 90%+ of ubuntu, xubuntu, kubuntu is all the same programs. The X, K, or null before ubuntu just describes the wrapper on the box, not the present itself. Many people concerned with maximizing their performace use XFCE or others from the lightweight window manager group to minimize what their machine needs to do to run, and leave the most resources free for "work".

Ubuntu and SSD's:

http://superuser.com/questions/423841/w ... -in-ubuntu

Ubuntu by default uses ext4, which has quite a few performance optimizations for SSDs. It also supports TRIM out of the box, although it has to be enabled . I dualboot between Windows 7 and Xubuntu 12.04 on a laptop with a 256GB SSD (128GB for each OS) and the Linux performance is quite good:

http://askubuntu.com/questions/18903/how-to-enable-trim

Boot from USB:

http://www.startupdiskcreator.com/

[clone]

thanks Hammer Time, thanks alot and thanks Stupify for the Xubuntu recommendation.

[Stupify]

what's ur plan for the box?

[Hammer_Time]

You are welcome Clone, let us know how the install goes!

[clone]

no plans other than occasional web surfer and just to have a look at Linux.

[Sauron_Daz]

Not a bad idea, may turn out to be the better choice over W8..

[Hammer_Time]

I know Clone already has Xubuntu installed, but this new development just came out for anyone reading this thread and interested in Linux:

http://linux.slashdot.org/story/12/11/1 ... dia-is-out

"Well, the latest edition of Mint is finally here (the release candidate, anyway); according to The Linux Mint Blog, 'For the first time since Linux Mint 11, the development team was able to capitalize on upstream technology which works and fits its goals. After 6 months of incremental development, Linux Mint 14 features an impressive list of improvements, increased stability and a refined desktop experience. We're very proud of MATE, Cinnamon, MDM and all the components used in this release, and we're very excited to show you how they all fit together in Linux Mint 14.'"

http://blog.linuxmint.com/

http://www.linuxmint.com/rel_nadia_whatsnew.php

Go Linux Mint!!

[psycho_mccrazy]

Hello everyone, I'm back, again,

First, let me wish a happy new year to everyone.... it has been long since I last visited...

I am now back to India, and just today I have reassembled my i5-2500K - HD7970 - win7U PC in the cooler-master HAF 932 case (and moved the core2duo E8400 machine to another cabinet).
Not really needing two windows boxes, I was had been thinking about using some old HDDs lying around to make the older PC into a linux box, but was not really able to decide upon what distro to use!

anyone have any opinions on what's a solid reliable Linux version currently out, will be putting it on my core 2 duo box.

and behold, here lies a thread tailor-made for me. My Linux-intent machine is also a core2duo box.

Let me go thru' this thread and then I will post if I need more advise!

[Hammer_Time]

Coolio, let us know how your linux adventure turns out!

[DIREWOLF75]

I am now back to India, and just today I have reassembled my i5-2500K - HD7970 - win7U PC in the cooler-master HAF 932 case (and moved the core2duo E8400 machine to another cabinet).

Since you´ve probably had some time with both those systems, how do you think they compare in performance, cpu wise i mean between the E8400 and the 2500K?

First, let me wish a happy new year to everyone.... it has been long since I last visited...

Same to you.

[psycho_mccrazy]

I am now back to India, and just today I have reassembled my i5-2500K - HD7970 - win7U PC in the cooler-master HAF 932 case (and moved the core2duo E8400 machine to another cabinet).

Since you´ve probably had some time with both those systems, how do you think they compare in performance, cpu wise i mean between the E8400 and the 2500K?

While some of the difference in performance can be attributed to the other system differences [DDR3-1600 8GB+Win7U64 vs. DDR2-800 4GB+WinXP32], I do find the i5 machine to be snappier in general usage, and definitely much, much faster in one parallel-capable CPU intensive task - DSLR RAW image processing in Lightroom.

[Hammer_Time]

I would surely hope so!!

Now all you have to do is use your old E8400 Core 2 Duo cpu, old mobo and ram and drives, and make a snappy Linux machine with it!! Might even rival your new i5 system in "snappiness" ( basic tasks of course ) , anything heavy-duty and the i5 will cream it of course...enjoy!

[Sauron_Daz]

Hello everyone, I'm back, again,

First, let me wish a happy new year to everyone.... it has been long since I last visited...

Same to you!
Better late then never, right?