Spec me a Linux

Woden

Woden

Woden

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Joined
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Oldham, Lancashire
As the title.

Used to be an avid Gentoo USSR but now just can't really be bothered with it all. Just want to install and use really.

Main uses will be Android Studio, Chrome and Steam. I'm guessing I'll just end up with some flavour of Ubuntu. Not the main one, because Unity looks god-aweful.
 
Think mint is your best bet been comfortable with debian based, For redhat try mageia , fedora is also rather good from what I've heard. Not used fedora myself for a long while so can't realy comment on it.
 
I haven't used Fedora since something like v2 :D

How nicely will mint work with my AMD r9 290?
 
Amd aint power houses under *nix tbh, personally using a 290x so know first hand. Having said that there not as bad as some make out. Best bet is when you have linux setup and going , Moan at AMDMatt! (sorry matt)

More that get at him for better Linux support the more he gets at his bosses :)

They are doing A LOT on the oss side to be fair, Their complete rewrite for the 3xx series and up is doing well apparently, Still early days though so you wont be playing Alien:isolation with it

Regards distros, Mint should be fine, I know mageia 5 is(It's what Im using)
 
A while ago I tried Steam on a few distros and only Ubuntu worked well, so that's probably your answer. Maybe improved by now though. As said pick a desktop environment you like more.
 
I know it's personal preference but I don't ever find Unity a displeasure to use, don't get me wrong though, there are a lot of ways I'd find it more visually appealing but it's not something that would steer me away.
 
joeyjojo said:
A while ago I tried Steam on a few distros and only Ubuntu worked well, so that's probably your answer. Maybe improved by now though. As said pick a desktop environment you like more.
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Works fine in mageia, not tried steam in mint, should be fine but yea. Try a few live discs see what you like before doing an install
 
Playing games? Dual boot Windows and Linux.

It's a nice idea running Steam in Linux, but it's a long way off working well.

Lots of Mint derivatives to pick from :)
 
ScoTTyBEEE said:
Graphics drivers are pants, games are pants, linux is a server OS, not a desktop OS.
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What is wrong with graphics drivers? :confused:

I have nvidia now & have no problems, had a AMD HD5770 before & also had no problems (running dual monitors)
Also not sure about 'games are pants' ... which games in particular?
Native games seem fine, if anything a lot of native games benchmark faster :rolleyes:

also lol at the "linux is a server OS, not a desktop OS." :rolleyes:
I personally have been running linux as desktop OS since 1998, including using it for native gaming (eg: quake3 back in 2000 - 2006)
If anything linux is much better than windows as a desktop OS
 
ScoTTyBEEE said:
Graphics drivers are pants, games are pants, linux is a server OS, not a desktop OS.
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Ding ding! We've found the guy that doesn't know what he's talking about! :rolleyes: This may have been true five years ago, however with all the major DEs out there now being extremely polished, and with most of them being available on all major distros (Unity is really the only exception), this just isn't the case anymore.

If you want something that will just work from install, you can almost guarantee Ubuntu will be come closest to being trouble free. Fairly recent packages, a decent driver selector in the settings, and fairly recent kernel releases, and the option to install common proprietary drivers from the get-go (I even found that Mint didn't install some Broadcom drivers that Ubuntu did, weird). To get all of your hardware working will likely just be a quick trip to the settings and selecting the correct graphics drivers and microcode firmware.

That said, for gaming I would (and do) use Windows. Better support for graphics drivers, larger range of games, it's just easier to dedicate Windows to gaming and Linux to everything else.
 
I don't see the point of using Mints, Cores or Mandrivas and such unless you temporarily want some edge development feature. Stick to powerhouses with long term development commitment. You want easy - go Ubuntu, you want stable go Debian you want server/business infrastructure with third party hardware support go CentOS. That's it. Everything else is just weird club remix versions or terrible karaoke renditions of the same song. Or garage punk band like Gentoo (every concert is different, every show is at risks of breaking all instruments and a riot, but the thrill, the thrill).

Personally I wouldn't use anything RedHat based at home as it's too corporate, stiff and stale plus I have never, ever had a major distro version upgrade that would go according to plan on RedHat based system. On the other hand never had Debian distro upgrade fail on me, not even when done remotely.
 
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v0n said:
I don't see the point of using Mints, Cores or Mandrivas and such unless you temporarily want some edge development feature. Stick to powerhouses with long term development commitment. You want easy - go Ubuntu, you want stable go Debian you want server/business infrastructure with third party hardware support go CentOS. That's it. Everything else is just weird club remix versions or terrible karaoke renditions of the same song. Or garage punk band like Gentoo (every concert is different, every show is at risks of breaking all instruments and a riot, but the thrill, the thrill).

Personally I wouldn't use anything RedHat based at home as it's too corporate, stiff and stale plus I have never, ever had a major distro version upgrade that would go according to plan on RedHat based system. On the other hand never had Debian distro upgrade fail on me, not even when done remotely.
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So basically, because you are unable to upgrade a redhat based distro without problems it makes redhat unanimously bad :confused:

Personally not had a redhat distro fail! So hows that fit into the equation.

Also, since when has Mandriva or even mint for that matter been considered as "bleeding edge" ?

Or are you doing the usual X distro is **** because, reasons :rolleyes:
 
pete910 said:
So basically, because you are unable to upgrade a redhat based distro without problems it makes redhat unanimously bad :confused:

Personally not had a redhat distro fail! So hows that fit into the equation.

Also, since when has Mandriva or even mint for that matter been considered as "bleeding edge" ?

Or are you doing the usual X distro is **** because, reasons :rolleyes:
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I didn't say such thing. I just said that - unless you are looking for some sort of unique feature or bleeding edge package that hasn't been included in regular/stable development - IMHO if you want debian, stick with debian, if you want ubuntu, stick with ubuntu. Why opt for oddball clones or something with smaller dev base and ever diluting support.

I say that from a perspective of Linux user for 18-20 years? I cannot count the number of oddball linuxes I jumped into over the years just for them to hit the wall, stop support for months, vanish somewhere before coming back as a two men and a dog type of operation few years later. I followed corporate managements into betting on countless RedHat clones (out of which CentOS is most stable and reliable, but even they had moments where they would release new stable version of distro and the darn thing would have to be defended for weeks or months unpatched against most common issues because dev team was busy juggling three or four releases in the same time). I insisted on breaking my work machine with Gentoo's "fits like a glove" emerges like a loon for years before retiring into safety of ready made packages. Debian on the other hand, as much as I didn't like it back in a day, never gave me any major headaches. Always up to date. Always upgraded every time. An odd third party apt source would break every now and then, but core system - not had an issue yet. Even upgrading remotely.

Now, I have no axe to grind with CentOS. I use CentOS. Every company that do not want to pay for RedHat but use enterprise hardware (Dell's OMSA etc) will these days opt for CentOS out of all clones. All I said is that I've experienced CentOS breaking dependencies all over the place on version upgrades, entire kernel modules even, I had servers reboot after upgrade to broken X, I had release upgrade overwrite selinux settings and lock me out, hell I even remember boxes coming back without networking once. It's survivable, it is what it is, it's guaranteed to be always reported by someone else on the net, which makes things much easier, but the point was - it does happen.
 
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v0n said:
I didn't say such thing. I just said that - unless you are looking for some sort of unique feature or bleeding edge package that hasn't been included in regular/stable development - IMHO if you want debian, stick with debian, if you want ubuntu, stick with ubuntu. Why opt for oddball clones or something with smaller dev base and ever diluting support.
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Well, to take Mint specifically, it's really Ubuntu with a choice of less-flashy windows managers (Cinnamon or MATE) and some multimedia non-free stuff pre-installed.

Of course you could just install Ubuntu and DIY but why bother? Mint fills the niche nicely.

Also FYI current releases are all based on Ubuntu 14.04 for the LTS so the exact opposite of "bleeding edge".
 
v0n said:
Now, I have no axe to grind with CentOS. I use CentOS. Every company that do not want to pay for RedHat but use enterprise hardware (Dell's OMSA etc) will these days opt for CentOS out of all clones. All I said is that I've experienced CentOS breaking dependencies all over the place on version upgrades, entire kernel modules even, I had servers reboot after upgrade to broken X, I had release upgrade overwrite selinux settings and lock me out, hell I even remember boxes coming back without networking once. It's survivable, it is what it is, it's guaranteed to be always reported by someone else on the net, which makes things much easier, but the point was - it does happen.
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Actually at the moment we are seeing a lot of businesses looking at Oracle Linux rather than CentOS in a business setting if they don't want to pay for support as it's another downstream from RHEL. It has a free license tier which includes patching and seems to be a bit better than CentOS from a patch repository point of view. Not seen much in the way of issues going between minor releases with any of them (wouldn't want to try between major releases).

Personally I don't like running Linux on the desktop, it's not so much Linux and the window manager it's more the applications just feeling unfinished and tending to have not so great interfaces. My colleague who does swear by his Linux desktop, including for gaming, runs Mint.
 
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I guess OS is very much a personal preference. For me, one set up I just get work done better in Linux rather than Windows. If I can get a steam game or two going then cool, but it's not a deal breaker. Good excuse to try CS:GO.

I'll give a few a go at the weekend, I should get Saturday off, first one in a couple of months (logistics at this time of year is hell for me, heaven for my bank balance). I'll probably XMonad too much!
 
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