After much research, and hours of fighting to get my wireless card to work with zorin; I am proud to say that I finally have gotten linux fully running on my main comp...... Now I shall be starting to work to try to get all my games up and running in wine. Prepare for an influx of random stupid questions that my google-fu cannot solve.
i liked the look of zorin.
I would've loved to use zorin on my laptop if not for the random freezes from the new ubuntu interface.
Yeah, Canonical is in a pretty pitiful state right now. Some rats have already left the sinking ship.
Short overview:
- x86: Ubuntu 14.04 came out later than the 14.04 community editions (Xubuntu, Kubuntu, etc...), and it's full of very annoying bugs that just don't get ironed out. Plus Unity is even more annoying and offensive to the retina than ever before.
- ARM: Ubuntu Touch started out with a great idea, but it went down the drain fast. In 2012, they had the right idea: make Ubuntu ARM work on mobile devices. Then they altered course and went all Google-nazi on the project, and now Ubuntu Touch is nothing, it's just not functional, Amazon and Yahoo spyware works, but the most basic things like a bloody email client, don't work...
The only thing Canonical can come up with, is closing community services and communication channels to suppress righteous criticism. The only thing that aggressively comes from Canonical minions is "don't criticize that something doesn't work, we have all the development tools at your disposal (tools that only work for Ubuntu by the way), community develop yourself so that it works".... yeah, so why did Canonical throw out the community development again?... why did they want a paid model instead of the GPL model? Yeah right, they wanted to do everything themselves and keep the community out of the equation, so that they could grab all the money... so why would ANYONE develop ANYTHING for Canonical?....
It's pretty simple. Ubuntu Kylin is now the official Chinese distro, based on Ubuntu Core, which, after Canonical threw out the community distros, is guaranteed to be further maintained and developed by the non-Canonical distros if such need arises in the future. Ubuntu Kylin has apps that provide essential features that are locked by the Western corporate gestapo, like Kingsoft Office with full features, full format compatibility (whereas Quickoffice and Drive have locked compatibility recently for OD files, MS-Office Mobile is locked for tablets in the Playstore, and Canonical killed the possibility of running things like LibreOffice on Ubuntu Touch devices by switching from the regular ARM version to a proprietary Android version). Ubuntu Kylin also works on ARM devices, and the Chinese government is funding ARM mobile development... just put 2 and 2 together and see why Lenovo bought Motorola lol... wanna bet your next phone or tablet will be by a Chinese manufacturer running a FOSS linux distro with a very nice interface (Like the phones and tablets in China by Xaomi and OnePlus have...), and wanna bet it won't have GApps installed?
It's not just Canonical, it's also Google, that is killing the Nexus project in favour of a more closed and even more nazi "Google Silver" certification.
The next 2 years are going to bring the demise of Canonical, the marginalisation of Ubuntu in favour of Western community ports of Ubuntu Kylin, the demise of Google's fourth reich, and a lot more unemployed people added to the stack of hundreds of thousands that have lost their jobs because they were betrayed by their corporate nazi overlords (and if you think the 50000 people that were sacked by HP this year is a lot, think again, the reality is that even more people work for HP through Chinese subsidiaries now then ever before, the corporate nazis are just closing shop in the West en moving to the East, same heads, different costumes).
The sad thing is that Canonical started out fighting exactly that which it has become.
Give Manjaro a try, it's based on Arch, which is entirely community-driven worldwide development (originating in Canada), and since last year, Arch has definitely become the number 1 enthusiast desktop linux platform bar none. Difference with Arch is that Manjaro (originated in Germany, France and Austria, but there's development all over the place in Europe and Turkey) is VERY user friendly with special tools like mhwd and it's own GUI installer, and that they make sure that everything "just works". For desktop use, it's by far the most trouble-free experience out there for inexperienced linux users, and it offers much better performance (latest linux kernels, much better graphical performance and power management!) than anything Canonical or second-grade Ubuntu Core based distros like Zorin or Elementary.
lol, fourth reich. After distro rolling ,the latest Mint Cin 17 is pretty easy and almost familiar. I am still struggling with terminlogy which seems to be different in ways from distro to distro. Manjero easily installs but i dont find it that easy to set up.
You obviously haven't read my posts lol
I honestly dont have a opinion other than what is easy to setup. Being linux noob that i am.
Kai Zoltan is a massive Ubuntu and closed source hater, he believes FOSS is the way forward, and that ARM will come over X86, do a tiny bit of research and you will find ARM and Linux distros that are not Ubuntu are the way forward, note, that he says in posts previously posted by him, Ubuntu core or Minimal is a good flavour, because its like setting up debian minimal, just easier.
Anyways as for Arch v Ubuntu, Ubuntu took over 6 months to catch upto a kernel that is now out-dated, Arch has the kernel as soon as its released, if you follow Trovalds way of thinking which both me and Zoltan do to a point, the fact we should be pushing this technology forward at a break-neck speed to help enterprise and devs, not sticking to age old technology like Ubuntu has, adding to that, things break more on less stable distros, problems that exist in Debian where ironed out ages ago in bleeding edge such as fedora.
Also as for him hating anything not arch based, the guy Uses Mageia mostly, hes a massive Fedora Rawhide supported and RPM lover, he also likes Portage.
Listen to the guy he has some very valuable knowledge in his head, I learned a lot from him, and the guy can help you fix problems with ease, and to be honest try something a bit more bleeding edge something like Korora or Manjaro, you may even like it ;)
as for his Windows and Mac hate, which I agree on but sadly still have to use Windows at work, Ugh... Windows is so far behind on technology its unreal, the fact I have to restart because the system needs specific things to turn off before updates can work is awful in enterprise environments, Windows also has awful performance issues, DX is a dead technology, OpenGL or Mantle is the way forward, linked with HSA which fedora has already, also MS and Apple are american companies, if you value your privacy on the net you will avoid a American piece of software, Ubuntu is based here, so avoid it.
His hate all stems down to this, He loves open source, he loves technology, he loves bleeding edge and he loves privacy and security, Linux bleeding edge fits him perfectly, and Manjaro gives him super easy access to another great platform
Ubuntu sucks dude. stop being a fanboy.
I actually agree with Kai. I can see where he/she is coming from: if you've only used Windows, then Ubuntu is leagues ahead of Windows (eh, sort of), and as far as I can tell it's doing a good job at introducing people to linux.
On the other hand, what anarekist and Zoltan is saying is perfectly true also: among all the linux distros, Ubuntu is the crappiest, ugliest and, most importantly, most offensive to the open source community, not because Unity is slow and buggy (it is), not because the forums are full of hipsters who don't know a thing about linux (they are), not because Ubuntu is riddled with bugs (it is), but for a more simple reason: they mine users for their data. This goes against what free software is all about: freedom.
Here, Richard Stallman on the subject: https://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/ubuntu-spyware-what-to-do
I personally will never recommend Ubuntu to anyone, but I understand people who like it and use it.
To summarize: can't we all just get along?
Well, i got my manjaro sorted. My apologizes to Zoltan if i offended. I dont know where to even start on my thoughts on manjaro so far. I guess i will start with this. I have never before had so much of my stuff in one place and run so well. I have yet to get to the gaming side of things. Working on that next. Oh does anyone know anything about Winamp? I noticed the latest xbmc dropped milkdrop. I am curious to know if it will still support and old winamp plugins. Maybe have to wait for a linux version?
I'm actually using Clementine right now (make sure to install all the additional gstreamer plugins). I cycled through three of four music players in the past weeks.
I'm not a Stallmann fan by any stretch of the imagination. I don't like many of his ideas to be honest. That doesn't mean that I don't try to understand his points of view. I think one would be crazy to dismiss the views of a genius like Stallmann without at least some degree of profound reflection on them. I think he's an interesting person, and most certainly more intelligent in a technical way than Linus Torvalds. Not all intelligence is of the same type though, there are different fields of intelligence, and Linux Torvalds is more intelligent in some fields, but not in terms of UNIX knowledge. Few people have achieved what Stallmann has achieved in software and computer science. It's not because he steps up in the floodlight that he should be scrutinized in any other way than any other person. In real life, you take a person as he/she is, and you don't like every aspect of other people, because that's how life is.
I'm not a FLOSS activist. For that, the "L" in the acronym goes a little too far for my taste when it comes to certain applications. I do believe that the general frameworks of software should be FLOSS, as should be hardware specifications, not because of some political principle, but simply because it touches elementary security of too many people. It's like seat belts and airbags in cars, it has become a major part of public safety, and therefore I believe that operating systems, BIOSes, hardware drivers and networking software should be FLOSS. I do also believe that application software might be non-FLOSS, even non-FOSS in certain circumstances, because there is a very important part of FOSS that nobody mentions: there is no product warranty! Some applications might require full product warranty, and for some of those purposes, I see the benefit and even the need of non-FOSS software, providing that the manufacturers are legally bound to provide that product warranty and are held liable, which is now not the case, as non-FOSS software licenses all provide extensive exonerations, and the suppliers accept no liability whatsoever, and I think that is just wrong. If you buy a toaster and it has a design fault that causes your house on fire, you can hold the manufacturer liable, why can't you do that with software? If you pay for it, I think you should be entitled to standard product guarantees. I also strongly believe that trust is the best catalyst for business. I know from experience that providing services based on FLOSS or FOSS, can be very lucrative, much more so than stepping into some kind of closed source crapware franchise system, because that's exactly what it is. People that provide closed source sales and support services, are like McDonalds franchisees, they don't have their own fate in their own hands, and never get the return they deserve. FOSS and FLOSS based services are much more lucrative, and because the software is just simply way better quality, it's easy to build up a relationship of trust with customers, and that is good for business. Such a relationship of trust can never be achieved by a closed source franchisee service provider, because the very product he depends upon, cannot be trusted.
As far as Canonical goes, first of all, the community spins (Xubuntu, Kubuntu, etc...) are not subsidized by Canonical any more. They were kicked out by Canonical after 12.04. Notwithstanding that fact, the community distros have proven to be better and more reliable than Canonical's Ubuntu, which is a mess. Part of this is the way Canonical runs stuff. For instance, they have a guy from Google (a Google employee) maintaining the chromium packages directly on their repos. Now chromium has been kicked from several repos of other distros, because Google typically doesn't care about open source principles, as in they break other packages, mutilate other packages without documenting, etc... Canonical does that with other third party source also. That means that they're letting third party corporate clowns merge stuff directly into their repos. That is a very scary idea, much more scary than the Amazon/Yahoo/Bing/etc... lenses and corresponding spyware and malware. Strict repo hygiene is everything for a GNU/Linux distro, because it's the basis of the lease of trust that the users give the distro, and without the user base, a distro means nothing.
The same goes for Mint linux. They go even further, in that they prevent security updates (they disable them by default because they categorize it as "for advanced users only"). That's just crazy. Not every piece of FOSS or FLOSS is automatically safe to use. Well, it's safer than closed source, but in order to boost the safety, regular updates are necessary. Disabling them by default is a very bad idea.
Then there is the problem of Ubuntu being not bleeding edge and not super stable either. This is a lesser problem for Ubuntu, because I have to admit that they are pretty fast in implementing security updates in their core and pushing them out to their LTS and development releases. Sometimes they're even faster than Debian, and Debian is damn' fast in pushing out security updates for their stable branch. But it's a problem nonetheless, because with Debian, you know that the security updates are going to implement just fine on the tried-and-tested old kernels and packages they provide in their stable releases. In fact, Debian stable with grsec is probably the safest of all distros, and I use it on the servers that are most at risk. With Ubuntu, you don't know that, and all they do is push through the Debian security updates basically, so if it works, all is hunky dory, but if it doesn't, which happens occasionally, you often have to wait for weeks before Canonical fixes it, sometimes even for months. And that's where bleeding edge distros have a leg up. Security solutions are merged with the kernel all the time, and newer kernels are more secure than older ones. Besides that, newer kernels also provide extra performance and capabilities, which is very important on desktop systems and ARM systems, just as a matter of efficient hardware support. The most bleeding edge distro is Fedora Rawhide, they're always the first with everything, and it's damn' stable too for as bleeding edge as it is, it's more stable than Debian Sid, and a hell of a lot more stable than Ubuntu development releases, which aren't even bleeding edge. Second in line is Arch. Arch is pretty bloody bleeding edge, and it's remarkably stable for such a bleeding edge community distro. Ubuntu is neither nor, they float somewhere in between everything and adhere to nothing. That doesn't mean that Ubuntu Core is not well maintained, because it is and it's always a good basis to build a distro on, but there is some maintenance involved to keep everything safe, which is far less of a problem with Arch/Manjaro, Gentoo/Sabayon or Fedora Rawhide/OpenSuSE Tumbleweed/Mageia Cauldron or Debian Sid, also because they're all rolling release, users generally do daily updates and upgrades, that's part of the program.
Then there is the other huge problem of Canonical, and that is support and community. There is a reason why the Community Manager Jono Bacon ran off. The Community Feedback forum was closed last year, Ubuntu One is now closed, basically the only peripheral service that remains from Canonical, is either paid support for enterprises and governmental institutions, or the community support fora, of which there are official ones and unofficial ones that were created because the official ones sucked too bad. The general quality of Ubuntu fora is pretty awful. Most posts are by absolute n00bs that don't know what they're talking about, most tutorials are incomplete or inconclusive, most solutions provided don't work or cause security issues, it's imprecise, chaotic, in short, not helpful at all. That's completely different in other distros. Debian, Arch and Fedora support fora have a big threshold, because they require professional lingo and completely disregard posts that are not accompanied by logfiles etc... that's not very nice for n00b users, but it's efficient and keeps all the Ubuntu-like spam away. At least you know that you'll find real answers that work and are safe to implement on their fora. Other distros like Manjaro and Sabayon have a very friendly but at the same time professional approach. Gentoo-based Sabayon is nicer from a linux perspective than Arch-based Manjaro under certain circumstances, i.e. for people that want to compile everything on their system. Manjaro is not the leanest distro, and Sabayon isn't either, they are user-friendly distros, Manjaro more than Sabayon. Thing is, some people don't want to configure Arch from the ground up because of time issues (and that often includes myself), and at that point, there is a choice to be made: do I need the 1% more performance from compiling everything myself with Sabayon at the expense of compiling time (compiling Firefox alone will take almost 20 minutes), if yes then I go for Sabayon, but obviously that's not a practical solution on a machine that has to be available all of the time, I need to be able to do other stuff while it's compiling shit. If the answer is no, then I'll use Manjaro, which is the distro that's the fastest to get a fully functional and preconfigured desktop install with. On my work machines, I don't use Manjaro or Sabayon, I use Mageia with SELinux or even Debian Stable with grsec extensions, because I don't need all the bloat of Steam and flash and proprietary graphics drivers there, but I need to have security compliance accepted by my insurance company and by the government, it's a completely different use case scenario. I do development on a Fedora Rawhide machine, because it offers the best and most recent tools for different hardware that I want to work with, and provides a complete solution that I know is going to be compatible with everything and just work, even if I decide to plug it into a Debian Stable machine later on or an ARM device.
And that's the way I see it, the right tool for the right job, nothing more, nothing less. I also use SailfishOS and Android, which are linux distros, but not GNU/Linux distros. It's not FLOSS, but it still provides the required control over the machine for secure operation and total user-centric functionality. It's a step up in complexity over GNU/Linux distros, but it's definitely a good productivity solution these days, because mobile low power hardware is sooooooo nice and efficient for me. I do have to say that I was always a huge fan of PDA's and pocket computers, and even calculators. I've always had pocket computing devices since I was a small kid. 7" tablets are the ideal devices for me because of the way I work. I have to think about lots of things at the same time, and need data retrieval, processing and analysis everywhere I go and at all times to get the most out of my work. I used to use PDA's (from Casios in the 80's to iPaq's in the 90's and early 2000's), then the first smartphones (Nokia Navigator and Ericcson P990i), and then smartphones and tablets. The form factor offers a lot of benefits, because it's like a multitool, everything is there, from function generators to oscilloscopes to software defined radios to arduino style breakout compatibility to full productivity software to remote management and access of backline server systems to VOIP to fully encrypted communications, etc etc etc, and it weighs less than 300 grams and fits in your pocket or the front pocket of your bag. I can watch the FIFA world cup for free on my tablet, I can use Spotify for free music everywhere, and at the same time use Wolfram Alpha, Geogebra, full word processing and spreadsheet editing, full push e-mail with full encryption and remote access my servers, all day long without needing a single cable, and it's always there when I need it. It's running on the Linux kernel, so it's CAN-BUS compatible so that I can build one into my car and connect it to the HVAC control and audio system/navigation without any problem, it does UART, I2C, etc... all natively without having to buy special hardware are needing external devices. Pure luxury. Bottom line: a Nexus 7 for example does more than a Tricorder in Star Trek, and is smaller and lighter! What's not to like about these things!
ARM and other RISC SoC solutions is just the way forward for so many reasons. First of all, it avoids having to pay for NSA spiked expensive hardware like Intel CPU's or New York fab produced AMD CPU's. Second of all, it incorporates a lot of functionality into a tiny and cheap piece of silicon. Even if the shelf life of ARM products is limited, if you're smart and don't pay for "premium" overpriced devices, but select your devices based on flashability with open source or custom firmware and software, you're spending very little money for a lot of functionality and user friendliness. If you buy a Nexus 7 every year, which you don't have to because the Nexus 7 2013 is still a modern device by today's standards (the first Nexus 7 was kind of a failure because it was based on the Tegra3, which causes the typical nVidia nightmares if you actually want to use your device for something else besides commercial content consumption), but suppose you buy a new Nexus 7 every year, that's 200 EUR per year that you spend on a device that's easy to customize, well built, has a good screen, has a Displayport output (Slimport connector) and a USB-OTG host connector, has a good battery life (especially without GApps), and that's a device that you can use productively every single day. So that's less than 1 EUR per day, whereas you gain maybe one or two billable hours per day because of the extended availability of your production tools for stuff that you can't do with x86 machines. That's a hell of a lot of specific return on investment! That means in my case that I've earned my device back after 1-2 days after taxes, and that the remaining 364 days of productivity I get out of the device are pure profit. Let's say I use an x86 PC for 8 hours a day, and let's say I use a bog standard 1500 EUR laptop. Same comparison as before. What can I do with that PC that I can't do with an ARM device? Maybe the things I do during 1 hour out of those 8 maximum (and that's stretching it). That means that it takes 6 months to get the specific return on investment on that laptop, and that's just a 1500 EUR laptop, that's just one cheaper x86 device. My desktop PC costs much more than the possible specific return from it over an ARM device over a period of one year (total return of investment is another thing obviously, the total return on investment is much faster, here I'm talking about the specific return on investment of investing in that platform over the alternative platform). And Intel and AMD bring new hardware out every year, so if I would follow the latest and greatest hardware like with ARM devices, I wouldn't get the full return on investment out of it. Well, I don't follow the latest and greatest x86 hardware to the point that that would happen, but it's still a sign that x86 hardware has reached a point of marginal returns that means it's not that useful any more in a lot of business applications.
Then there is another point, and that is connectivity. Last week, the world has reached a point where there are more mobile data connection subscriptions on the planet than there are individual inhabitants on the planet. That is a market penetration factor of more than 100 % on a global scale. This is unseen. Even broadband land-based data connection market penetration is hardly more than 90 % on a family level in the Western world. On a global and per capita scale, it's much less than that. It means that the market has already decided that broadband land-based connections are not as sexy as mobile connections. Mobile connections also suck less (although here in Europe, I don't have anything to complain about when it comes to - especially the business grade - broadband connections) because Netflix and other bogative (for understanding of this term, see the No Agenda podcast) hasn't come to spoil them yet. Mobile connections are still mainly used by mobile RISC devices, most of them being ARM designs running a Linux kernel based distro like Android or FirefoxOS.
That's why I'm not investing that much in x86 any more. I still have a lot of x86 infrastructure and devices, and I regularly buy new ones, but since 2012 I also have an ARM-based scalable server, which is very easy and cheap to scale up and upgrade as new hardware comes out, uses a lot less electric energy, produces a lot less heat (which again costs electricity because it loads down the HVAC), and is definitely safer to use than Intel hardware from a security standpoint. The scaled nature also means extra redundancy within the system structure, thus higher reliability for the system as a whole. I feel bad about money I spend on the x86 platform, and have been feeling bad about that since last year. I feel like it's investing in new IBM typewriters after the IBM 5150 came out. The ridiculously slow the IBM5150 seems now, back in the day, where it cost a lot of money, it was actually a great investment, because you could do a lot of things with it very fast, like spreadsheet calculations and document editing and data management, which took a lot longer before. I get the same feeling about x86 these days. There's so many things I can't do with x86 that I can do with RISC SoC devices, like improve my quality of life whilst boosting my productivity. I realize that's typical for my use case scenario, because I travel a lot and have multiple offices and I tend to find making time for other things besides work very important, like family, making music, cooking, social life, culture, helping other people, and experimenting and learning, but I think that the technological revolution should benefit the quality of life more than anything else, and contrary to that, it is used by the corporate mafia to put ever more strain on people and to exclude massive amounts of people from having a good quality of life. I think that's wrong, and I think that the mobility factor of mobile devices could definitely change that if it's implemented well. I still think that technology is there to serve humans, and not to make humans serve. That's also why I dropped closed source software for business purposes back in 1996, because it wasn't serving me, it was making me serve.
In the end, it's all about the user. That's where I think Canonical is hugely gone overboard. Convergence and Touch is all fine and dandy, but to be honest, after 18 months of Touch development, they don't even have a functioning mail client... that's pretty awful. At the same time, there are fully functional Arch, Fedora and Debian installs for all kinds of ARM devices, including the very small selection of ARM devices Ubuntu Touch also supports (mainly just the Nexus 7 2013). What does Canonical actually offer the end user in net terms? Well, they maintain Ubuntu Core and push through Debian security updates quite fast. That's it. And that means that Ubuntu Core based distros that don't have their heads up their arse (and there are many of those, e.g. Mint, Zorin, Elementary, etc..., which just aren't safe to use and don't offer a complete user experience) can provide a nice product. Xubuntu/Kubuntu are nice distros in my opinion. Lubuntu is acceptable, Ubuntu Gnome is pretty mediocre but still better than Canonical's Ubuntu with Unity. I actually have Xubuntu 14.04 running on a machine, it runs fine. I wouldn't be able to use it on every machine, because of hardware support issues that require a more modern kernel, but on that older machine Xubuntu runs just fine and does what it's supposed to do.
In the end, everyone should decide for himself - just like I do for every PC and use case scenario - which distro to use, but they shouldn't use Ubuntu or Arch "because everyone uses it" or "because it's hip", because those are bogus reasons. Ubuntu can still be a good choice for some new linux users, for instance people that mainly need a PC for photo editing and have used a Mac before. They know some *NIX problem solving and they are used to the windows close buttons being on the wrong side of the window, and they're used to loud colours and lots of clicks and dancing icons. Why not? It's a solution. But for ex-Windows console users? I think they're better off starting with something like Manjaro, because the functionality the way it's preconfigured is very similar to Windows, it's bleeding edge and thus pretty secure with autoupdates, it has a lot of software available through the AUR, it's definitely high performance in comparison to Ubuntu+Unity, and new users can find solutions in both the extremely good Arch wiki and the very friendly and informal Manjaro fora, which exist in different languages. One of the great things about Manjaro is that they provide specific tools for getting stuff done that hard core linux users take for granted, but that are part of the learning curve of new users. Like what does a new user care about libGL? Manjaro has now merged that into the mhwd (Manjaro Hardware Detection) tool. Much better solution than Jockey and shit, and a good and user-friendly helping hand in comparison to distros where the user has to configure everything manually, which may be pretty confusing for new users. Manjaro can be used by newbies and by advanced linux users, it's still very close to Arch, closer than Ubuntu is to Debian. What's not to like about it really? That's why I recommend Manjaro to new linux users. It's not about distro fanboism. I don't care what distro someone uses (in fact, on many machines, I don't care what distro I'm using myself!), as long as they're not using a closed source software console, and as long as they take control over their hardware and their lives. And I don't care what Stallmann and Torvalds have to say about anything, they have their opinions, I have mine, everyone else has theirs.
And with that long post that I mainly wrote during my lunch, you'll now excuse me, I have Rock am Ring to attend to (I sadly had to miss the Iron Maiden concert yesterday, but I've recorded the live broadcast of it so I can still watch it later), where I will be continuing to control business thanks to to power of ARM and FOSS, whilst enjoying the music and the people and the company of my wife and friends.
My simple post has become a heated debate....... I dont know how I should feel. Although I am planning on testing out some arch. Still pretty weak with bash, but I am learning quickly. I stepped back to windows due to some time constraints with work. (no free time, must play games) Will be testing out some of the other distros soon to find the one I prefer to work with.
"My simple post has become a heated debate....... I dont know how I should feel [..]"
You should feel very good. Debate is very healthy and educative.
I actually am very happy. I love spuring discussion. It makes me happy.
My advice would be, try as many linux distro's as you can and make your own opinion based on your usage scenarios.
Not many people are true linux aficionados or need to be.
Use whatever works for you and don't be discouraged by linux politics.
i planned on it. I am looking to utilize the os for gaming as well, so i am trying to get better at bash to ensure my plugins for wine are setup correctly. I just hate all the issues that windows brings, and I dont even want to get started on OSX