Reccomend me an operating system

Moeks said:
Indeed, I would go the USB method if I were you, you can download a small program called 'unetbootin' that will burn an ISO file to USB for you and make it bootable, nice fast way of doing it.
Click to expand...

Good to note that a few USB flash drives are inexplicably incompatible. I have a couple of PNY 4, 8 and 16GB jobbies which do not want to be bootable, no matter how they are formatted or which tool used. My Kingston, Sandisk and a different PNY work fine though. Mystery to me
 
Oh right, I've yet to find one that doesn't work, but noted for future reference. Most of my collection of USB sticks are Sandisk and Kingston. However I do have a PNY I use for carrying files around on, I have never tried to make it bootable but I might see how it reacts.
 
Manjaro's looking great. It's still a bit rough around the edges but it's very promising. The main issue with arch is that it's nowhere near as tested as Debian or Fedora based distributions - but that's the price of having cutting edge packages.
 
I've been using Mint Cinnamon exclusively for a few days partly because I recommended it in this thread. I've used previous versions of Mint in the past, along with other flavours of Linux. But I realised I haven't used it "in anger" apart from in a VM which does give a lesser experience. So a few days ago I setup a dual boot and installed it. I've also added a few nice touches like guake, played with the themes to make it cleaner, then moved the menu bar to the top and installed Cairo Dock for an OSX like experience.

I have to say I'm really impressed. Certainly more impressed than I remember from old - and I was quite impressed back then. The whole system runs far more smoothly than my Win 7 install, looks lovely and I've got it setup pretty much the way I want it to look like - a cross between OSX and Windows and taking the best of both worlds (dock behaviour like OSX and window and keyboard behaviour like Windows).

When I first started using Linux way back with Red Hat 7 I didn't quite "get" the whole point of choice. I couldn't decide what I liked and why I had to make so many decisions. But now with more experience I love the way I can get it seup pretty much exactly as I want. If something does'nt look or behave the way I want it there are loads of other choices out there.

Apart from occasional gaming I think I'll stick to Mint for a while and see whether any significant issues appear with extended use.
 
Back in the day Linux distributions would put as much in as possible, more was seen as better. So you'd get 10 CDs full of applications you'd never use, 10 text editors, etc. It was Ubuntu I think that first started the trend of picking one good app per category and going for installations that did everything you needed with the minimum number of apps.

I was the same with Mint. I found it clunky to begin with, but the latest version is excellent. A few tweaks transforms the look (I like to use Adobe's free Source Sans Pro font). It runs XBMC brilliantly so I can watch stuff plugged into my TV, and I've even played a few games on Steam.
 
^ Maybe you've been using the first released versions of Cinnamon, which were unstable. The current version is fine, it hasn't crashed once for me.
 
I would give opensuse and/or debian a try.

I would also install arch linux using the fantastic wiki, once you have done this you will understand linux 10 times more than when you started.

Ubuntu and Mint are for the great unwashed.

I wouldn't touch ubuntu in all seriousness, it has devolved away on its own, I would stick with a KISS linux OS like opensuse and especially arch.
 
Linux Mint 15 KDE.
Although I'm waiting for the next release of Chakra. Possibly my favourite distro but the last version had an annoying issue for me where it wouldn't save my network settings so I'd have to re-enter them every time I logged on.

*edit*
Just installed Manjaro. I like it!
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom