So I'm finaly about to move or at least try out Linux for real as my main driver for at least a month, see how it works out. I have tried some distributions in a virtutal box, Debian,Mint,Ubuntu. It feels like most dists are the same and as I'm quite new to Linux(though I have used it before) maybe I'm focusing on the wrong thing, the choosing the right desktop enviroment might be more important for me, so I've settled on Linux Mint for now, as it's quite noob friendly and I already have som experience with it. However I fear that I will get to dependent on the desktop, I really want to learn the command line as I go, so there might be a better desktop or dist for me? I have decied that I'm ready to bump into som problems every now and then, but that is just part of the fun in my opinion.
I think that KDE really looks slick and have cool congifguration capabillities, but it feels like it should be a bit unstable and slow? Gnome 3 doesn't appeal to me at all, I don't like that. Then there is also the MATE version of Linux mint, more stable but less configurable, kinda reminds me alot of Windows XP. Also eats less resources than KDE but doesn't look half as good. I managed to add a "Windows Super taskbar" to KDE quite easily, is this possible in MATE aswell?
I'm not sure what I'm actually looking for here, any help would be appreciated!
The choice is really up to you, what really is it that you're looking for. I started my Linux life with Ubuntu's Unity. It served its purpose and is still looking great. Though they are aiming for a unified experience and are taking a lot of customization out from the system thus when you really want to make it your own, you'll break something along the way. But that's a bit off the topic. Unity is a great DE! Why I moved to KDE (Kubuntu) is really simple, it offers so much more via GUI. I wanted a distro where I could work as fast as possible and KDE offers just that - so many options and choices, but its a bit overwhelming at first. Also I find it to be possibly the ugliest desktop out there - but again, once you tweak it and maybe add a QTcurve theme to it, it becomes gorgeous and extremely functional. XFCE is another great choice (Xubuntu, Manjaro). Flexible to some extent and very functional.
But firstly you should elaborate a bit more, what is it that you want your distro to do?
If you want absolute speed with functionality, I would suggest Manjaro XFCE. But if you want a good PPA/aptitude package based distro, in which you don't look at the terminal fixing things 20% of the time, I would suggest something from the *buntu lineup. (mint for a good LTS lineup)
Yeah, a bit of a long post here now... but in a nutshell - there's something for everyone. Just let us know what you are after and we can surely point you in a direction.
Well, I've always used Windows and I guess I'm a bit brainwashed over how a dekstop should look like. I might be alot more productive on another DE, I don't know. This is my main driver witch I use every day. I surf the web, program a little bit, watch movies on it, play games, hosts my plex server and also normal office stuff such as paying bills, printing documents etc, nothing fancy really that requries anything special.
Maybe a bunto dists would be something, however I'm not to fond of Unity and supporting things as amazon integration but yeah, I don't know.
Debian,Mint,Ubuntu are very similar since Mint is based upon Ubuntu and Ubuntu is based upon Debian. Therefore the experience is almost the same using those three distros.
If you try Fedora,Centos (based on red hat) or if you want a more suited distro for learning try Archlinux Or Gentoo. There is also Slackware but Arch,Gentoo have better wiki/fourm support. Also Arch wiki/forum have more "general" tips/help that could be used (at least what i have found out) on Debian based distros compared too Gentoo.
And Arch if you read around is more recommended then Gentoo (and Slackware). Slackware i have no real experience with but what i have read is more hardcore then Arch but they are similar also the Slackware wiki/forum is not as good (assumes everyone have quit high linux knowledge).
I would recommended you try a couple other distros (not all based on debian) before going live and then if you really want too learn go with Arch. BUT read up on Arch before you do.
Okay, I understand. I've looked at Red hat and Gentoo but I think they look a bit above my head. Maybe I should start with a bit eaiser dist and then move on to a bit more advanced distrubutions.
I would also recommend that every user should at least try Arch once in their lifetime to see how it suits the needs. It is magnificent that you can literally put together your own machine with only the packages that you want and need. For a starter, Manjaro is a good choice to "learn the ropes" of package managing and stuff. In my eyes, there should be only three main branches (I might be mistaken as well): 1) Debian based (*buntu's, Mint, debian, etc) 2) Arch based (arch, manjaro, etc) 3) RedHat based (centos, redhat, etc) [mainly only for enterprise usage]
Between debian based and arch based, the only ground-breaking difference IMO is how the packages are handled, and this is something that you must decide upon before picking a distro! Debian based: You add repositories or PPAs from which you can get and install .deb packages which are pre-compiled specifically for your distribution eg. for Ubuntu14.04LTS, Ubuntu14.10 and so on. Arch based: You download scripts which get the source code for the packages you want, then you compile the actual packages on your machine in order to install them. This is a great solution but as the compilation is done on your machine, you really need to have all the required compilation packages and on some rare cases, need to even modify the initial install script. There are also package managers for Arch which do this "behind the scenes" but one should go through the whole process himself at least once to know what actually is being done in case something fails to build. In a nutshell, I would strongly suggest a debian based distro for everyone who wishes to use Linux just for everyday use and gaming. But should you wish to go hands-down-and-dirty with Linux, give Arch a go, it really is something spectacular.
It all depends on you needs. If you want to learn the terminal more in depth you can do that even in Mint. The Distro does not matter. Mint just has a GUI option to do lot of stuff but you can do everything via the terminal if you wish (faster and more reliable actually). It is as in depth s you make it.
Distro choice has to do with what you wish to use or learn. Out-of-the-box user friendly distros, like Mint and Ubuntu. Stability: CentOS and Debian. Bleeding edge and performance Fedora and Arch and so on.....
You might wanna try Debian as a learning experience. Fully stable and customizable but older packages to ensure stability. Thus you will need some time to set up things via the terminal for everything to work as you want to.
Yes I think a debian build would be good for mulitmedia and game consumption and an Archbased for playing around and testing things out. I actually have an old computer around, so I might install Arch on that one and doing all sorts of experiments on it.
In my opinion, the most relevant answer to most "what distro" questions, is that most linux users have gone through a phase of distrohopping before deciding on the set of distros (yes, a lot of linux users don't stick with just one single distro, but use the right distro for the job that they like the best for that application) or the one single distro that they feel most comfortable with.
Any distro can be used for any job, and any DE or WM or application will work on any distro. The main things that decide distro choice are documentation (and language availability thereof), release model (periodic, pseudo-rolling or rolling), and kernel support (bleeding edge or not). Some distros offer all of these features in different branches with different feature sets, like for instance you can have Debian any way you want it (old kernel with long term support and periodic release model or bleeding edge kernel with rolling release model, Debian offers 3 branches), you can have OpenSuSE any way you want it (regula numbered periodic releases with recent but not bleeding edge long term support kernels or Tumbleweed with bleeding edge kernel and rolling release model), etc...
Important thing to note, is that if you switch distro, you don't have to reformat your /home partition, so you can just leave your applications and user data in place, and only swap the system files. Switching distros is therefore an easy 5 minute job.
Ah yes Fedora. That was my very first Linux distro I got my hands on and it has come a long way. Surely, nothing wrong with using Fedora, it's a good piece of art. :)
If you want to learn bash (command line), I recommend rolling with Arch Linux. If you've been using computers for a long time, you'll be able to do this. I'll warn you now - the learning curve is high and it won't be easy. No worries - Arch has an outstanding community and great support (forums, wiki, irc, etc).
The primary benefits of Arch are bleeding edge software updates and you install the system the way you want it. This forces you learn about how Linux works. It's a bit of work, but once you have it the way you want it - your computer becomes an extension of you.