I'm planning to format my laptop and make a dual boot system with both Linux and Windows. I tried to work with Manjaro in the past but I wasn't to successful. It has been a while since my last attempt and I want to try again. But I was wondering what Linux version I could install on my laptop, both from a compatibility standpoint and that it is used for work/study. It's a Toshiba L500-1ZP that I bought in the summer of 2010 and it has the following specs currently:
Intel Core i3-330M @ 2.13Ghz
8GB DDR3 CM3X4GSD1066
Samsung SSD 840 EVO 250GB
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4650
Programs I use related to work/study: ArcMap, QGIS, GrassGIS. I know the first has limited Linux compatibility while the others are open source programs which do support Linux. Then there are the usual word processors (Microsoft Office, Open Office), but I am looking into using LaTeX.
Frankly, I like Debian the best (for precompiled distros). They don't mess around. It's probably the most stable and best tested distro. Ubuntu LTS versions are a close 2nd place. I'd stay away from Arch distros unless you want something bleeding edge, which isn't really necessary on an older system.
Seeing as you had trouble with Manjaro, Gentoo is probably out of the question, but Gentoo is nice as you can build all your packages optimized to your hardware fairly easily.
Just stick with Debian or Ubuntu LTS. Worst case you don't like them, and you can try something else.
I second Debian. It is simple and has wide compatibility. Ubuntu is just Debian with some more stuff on top. I usually just do the netinst.iso so it pulls all of the latest packages.
If you have to use programs that aren't available on Linux though I have to ask why are you looking at installing it? You have to consider your usage first and foremost. I am all for going Linux if you can, but if you can't do your job it just doesn't work.
+1 For Ubuntu as it will have the best overall hardware and user support. I'd personally just install various linux distros on USB sticks and boot to USB until you find something you like. If you already have Windoze installed and booting I would also suggest maybe using Virtual Box so you run linux on top of windows and don't have to reboot every time you want to switch environments... which can be a PITA.
If you want to stay linux centric, just go the other way around and vbox your win install and call it a day. This is the best advice I can give if you are getting your feet wet for the first time and still need to leverage M$ products and linux. This will also let you run both desktop environments simultaneously and seamless if you enable that mode.
I ran Mint on my laptop for years, but switched to Fedora this year. I use RedHat/CentOS on my servers at work and have switched some of my private VMs to CentOS as well (from Debian). I'd recommend either, both Debian based distros and Fedora/CentOS are easy to use and have plenty of resources online available if you need help.
Fedora is the bleeding edge distro for CentOS, but works basically the same (and RedHat is the commercial variant). In the end it gets down to personal preference. Do you want the newest packages? Fedora. More matured/stable packages? CentOS/Ubuntu/Mint/Debian. Debian and Ubuntu LTS have the oldest/most stable packages. You can install the window manager of your choice in any distro and they all have usually the same packages available through either yum/dnf or apt/aptitude.
No problems on Fedora so far, works like every other linux :) and I can attest to QGIS working on Fedora, but it will on every other distro as well.
MX16 might be an interesting distro to start on. Its a Debian based distro, but the developers did everything to make it as userfriendly as possible. They included allot of MX tools that should make configure the system pretty easy. I read allot of very good feedback about MX16.
+1 for Debian Stable. I bet a machine that old would comfortably run Stable. Debian is stupidly easy to use by Linux standards and it's my daily driver.
The irony is that I find Arch to be more stable than Debian Stable.
Also, in the Debian world, "stable" means "outdated by at least 7 minor versions, hopefully a major version and probably not patched because we haven't gotten around to it"
Thanks for all the replies! So I have many options. What I was wondering though is that back when I tried using Manjaro I had to change the graphics related aspect to an earlier version to support my graphics card properly. Would this mean that for something like Debian Stable or CentOS/Ubuntu/Mint equivalent (as in mature stable builds) that I will be using an older build (previous stable builds) for all my hardware or is it the case that this can be adapted, like running more recent versions of software for the other parts.
Perhaps a bit of a weird question, but im in the process wrapping my head around it.
I have a legit question to add to this. Why do people assume linux won't run on their stuff? We're not as demanding as windows and definitely not as noninclusive as apple.... I saw 10 ir more of these posts in the last few months of the year.... Why?
Coming from Windows, im not used to the process of how to keep drivers and things updated as I do in Windows. With windows I install the OS and then install the latest compatible drivers I have for my hardware and then the rest. With Linux I have the impression it is different and then you are unsure if it actually utilizes what you have in your system. Though, it is likely that when everything is set up properly it'll run better than windows, but I have no clue how to install everything so that it works well with my hardware.
It's not an assumption. Debian Stable still doesn't fully support Skylake Intel Video cards. You have to go with Debian testing for that to 'just work' after install. There are myriads of other things like that you may have to deal with - especially newish hardware.
That's why I qualified my response based on the age of OP's system.
This is correct. I use Testing because I have a skylake laptop and a bunch of the hardware didn't work "out of the box" so to speak, but an older machine would probably run Stable really well. Stable is old though, I think when I tried it it used the 3.6 kernel after install. My laptop is new enough that 4.6 was basically the minimum for things to work properly with minimal fuss. One could probably hack Debian Unstable onto OP's machine, but it would be a lot of work. An LTS version of Ubuntu might be a better choice then since it will likely be "newer" than Debian Stable, but still work relatively quickly. I don't really know though. When I started in Linux I used Ubuntu 16.04 and immediately upgraded the kernel from 4.2 to 4.6.2.