Distro to just 'work'?

Columbo

Columbo

Columbo

Soldato
Joined
26 Mar 2007
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Location
Nottinghamshire
Right I'm wanting to start to play with Linux and would like to start off with something that just works to get me used to it.

I've got an Asus laptop with an Intel U9400, 4gb RAM and 64gb SSD to play with and if I can get used used it will move my desktop as well.

I would be particularly interested in any photo editing options that might be available as well.
Please bear in mind I've never touched anything Linux ever so I'd like to walk before I can jog so go easy on me! :D
 
Try a few live cds before actually installing, as they all tailor desktop environments slightly differently. Kubuntu might be the easiest to migrate, KDE is a lot like windows with a few fancier features to be honest.

For photo editing Gimp is the default answer, because it is very good. There is a windows version too.
 
Mint just works, anything debian based is usually a safe bet but ive found mint the best out of all the distros ive tried. I stepped outside the debian bubble and tried opensuse as well, absolute pita to get working.

IIRC photo editing in linux is sorely behind windows though, I think the program used is called GIMP and it cant match photoshop from what I hear. I have no experience of either though so you should try it yourself :)
 
Another vote for Linux Mint. I've been distro hopping for a while to get more familiar with Linux, out of Fedora, CrunchBang, Ubuntu and Debian it's my preference. CrunchBang is a fairly safe bet also.
 
Well that was easy....I'm typing this from the LiveUSB boot in Firefox and everything works...wow!
It looks and feels fantastic and so refereshing, this could get addicive!
 
Mint is great. I highly recommend checking out the KDE version as well as the Cinnamon one as the Desktop Environments make a big difference to everything you do.
 
Thanks I've installed Mint 16 with Cinnamon so Vista is now history on my laptop. It truly feels like a new machine! Do I need to do anything to make it utilise the SSD fully or is it fine to just leave it?

For photo editing I'm trialling Corel Aftershot Pro which seems pretty good as I use Lightroom on my desktop and this seems pretty close.

One issue I've encountered is Netflix, which isn't a deal breaker but I do use it on occasion on my laptop. I've tried a couple of the guides on web but none of them have worked any suggestions?
 
Elementary OS Luna (www.elementaryos.org) is another great distro that just works. It's based off of Ubuntu but looking at it you can see it's clearly styled after a Mac OS X environment. Easily editable as well through the 'Tweaks' application you can install so you can make it your own ;)

There is a certain way to install it though to optimize it running to the best of its ability which is easily done by following the many YouTube tutorials :) Good luck and glad you're enjoying Mint!
 
Kappa303 said:
Elementary OS Luna (www.elementaryos.org) is another great distro that just works. It's based off of Ubuntu but looking at it you can see it's clearly styled after a Mac OS X environment. Easily editable as well through the 'Tweaks' application you can install so you can make it your own ;)

There is a certain way to install it though to optimize it running to the best of its ability which is easily done by following the many YouTube tutorials :) Good luck and glad you're enjoying Mint!
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Elementary OS is beautiful; I'm not generally too keen on Linux distros which go for the ersatz Mac OS approach, but eOS has a lovely slick, professional out-of-the-box look and feel which does more to dispel the "hobby OS for geeks" aura than any other distro I've tried to date. :)

Columbo said:
Thanks, I'll create a Live boot tonight for Elementary as it looks rather good.
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If you're trying out various Linux live CDs, you could probably save a fair bit of time and trouble by using YUMI to whack them all onto a single flash drive (assuming it's big enough of course).
 
Kappa303 said:
Elementary OS Luna (www.elementaryos.org) is another great distro that just works.
Click to expand...

Elementary is a good one.

Another worthy candidate is the rather clumsily named PCLinuxOS, comes with out-of-the-box support for most recent PC hardware and choice of KDE or MATE desktops.

http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=pclinuxos

I've been playing around with a few different distros, but ultimately I keep coming back to Mint; perhaps I'm biased because my first distro was Mint 12 and I've just gotten used to it, but Mint just feels right to me in a way that most other distros can't quite match.
 
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