Which distro offers the best experience?

Hi guys,

It's a competition! A head-on challenge!

We have a comparison of five most popular Linux distribution - Ubuntu, Fedora, Mint, openSUSE, and Mandriva. Which one provides the best experience for average user, including installation, desktop use, package management, security, stability, support, and other topics?

http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/linux-best-experience.html


Cheers,
Mrk

 

3 measly points for Mint you should review Helena, Mrk, then you might score it more generously

I haven't tried Mandriva or Fedora so don't know about them but Mint has been an excellent user experience for me and it's the only distro of all i tried that properly supports my graphics cards. As for stability, it's been rock solid along with its great user experience.

 

Well, in fairness..if you read it all, you'd see that he already covered that topic...

"Linux Mint 8 Helena review coming soon! This means that some of the findings in this comparison may not fully or correctly reflect the repertoires of goodies and baddies that Helena brings to the table. So stay tuned. "

 

I did review Mint - after writing this article ... Mint review and the conclusions coming in about a week or so. Judge me then
Mrk

 

I guess everyone's entitled to their own opinion but my choices would look a bit different than Mrk's. I use Ubuntu not because I'm some empty-headed fan boy that just follows the latest trend. I use it because it works best for me. I've tried all the other distros Mrk mentioned recently and had trouble with them all either hardware related or how they functioned. The only gripe I have with Ubuntu is on the initial install there are no Desktop icons displayed at all (unlike Mandriva). Not a good idea when trying to lure Windows converts over to the other side. And setting up Desktop launchers (like Trash or Home) is not an easy thing to do unless you know your way around a little bit.

BTW, I started out in Linux these 5+ years ago with Mandrake 10. I soon found Ubuntu (a relative unknown at that time) and took to it rapidly. I was suffering from a bad case of "dependency hell" with most of the other distros I tried back then (things are SO much easier now...).

Just my 2 cents worth.

Later....

 

I would give less weight to installation and security. Installation is a one-time thing, and all Linux distros are all more or less secure. None of them are a disaster of vulnerabilities waiting to be exploited, and that should be all that matters.

openSUSE's installer is powerful, but the partitioning process is buggy on my system. If one uses the partitioner to modify anything during the install process, the installer will automatically mount them after applying changes, and this can throw a monkey wrench into things, especially if you specify to format the drives as well.

Looks are subjective. I'd elect openSUSE GNOME and Mint for the win myself.

Security-wise, I'd actually penalize Fedora for being overzealous. Yes, there IS such a thing as too much security.

Support, Mint should tie for first place as well if Ubuntu does, given how 99.9% of the support advice for Ubuntu is applicable for Mint as well.

Just my 2 cents. All in all, it's rather strange that, according to your scoring system, Ubuntu and Fedora turn out to be equally suited for average Linux users...

 

Ahh, the perils of skimming an article at 5 in the morning Well now I'm confident Mrk will place Mint on the pedestal it so deserves

 

I just knew it! I was 100% sure you'd choose openSUSE roud:

nice read mate

 

Ubuntu seems to be the only distro offering a 3 year Long Term Stable Release every 3 years. This is good for me eg. I still run Hardy as my main distro and try the new releases on a 2nd hdd (Karmic at the moment). When Lucid is released end April I am hoping that being a LTS release, it will be pretty stable as I will then wipe Hardy for Lucid.
In the meantime I will try SUSE in Vbox, but what puts me off using it as my main working distro is the lack of a 3yr. release - or are their regular distro upgrades foolproof ?

Edit: Thank you for the article. Sparkling as usual !

 

Interesting comparison, thank you so much for all the effort you put into reviews and "consumer reports".

I have noticed that Mandriva runs my CPU hot, so hot that the computer shuts off. Haven't researched this issue though.

 

I LOVE FEDORA


I had only one firefox crash on fedora which is also due to my mistake as far its running very smooth and i put my selinux enable but on default mode i tried it on strict mode it give trouble so i make it default but didn't disable it

what i love about fedora may be other opinions differ

1 good security by default
2. yumex best and easy use
3. simple interface and best fonts
4. best performance in 32/64 bit fast as compare to others
5 best videos playback in 32 bit and best sound quality

may be some differ but in my computer i see it play best quality as compare to mint ubunu opensuse and PCLinuxOS

6 redhat alternative i used redhat 9 but after fedora its always be my primary distro now i dont see any other alternative for desktop except fedora
centos is good for servers but in desktop its look like you are running 98 at age of window 7 i mean no eye candy stuff

7. very good support at forums i wont say best but its really good most of the quires resolve in search mode before even putting on forums

8. gnome lover fedora is one of best

i never tried mandriva so i cannot comment on it but as far mint 8/ubuntu 9.10 opensuse 11.2 and pclinuxos 2009 which i tried i found fedora 12 as my number one choice and mint 8 as second

now my default system run on fedora all the time and i use vista/mint some time once in a week or so

last thing why fedora get so bad comments i agree when fedora comes its really like cutting edge (beta type) with some troubles like no nvidia rpm .......etc but i download every new version of fedora after 1 month of its release date then 1st thing i do is update it so 99% of default bugs resolved for me 1% is already given on fedora forums if anything left

only thing i hate about fedora is its less life cycle support expect that its rocks for me everytime


some good guides before start fedora

http://docs.fedoraproject.org/
http://www.fedoraguide.info/index.php?title=Main_Page
http://www.mjmwired.net/resources/mjm-fedora-f11.html
http://www.my-guides.net/en/content/view/174/26/

i really like your review mrk it seems fair on fedora on default mode

hope next time you give some more marks

please do not feel shy to use cheat codes (like install it after one month when most of default bugs resolved with updates and all other tweaks )before reviewing it

 

Hi Ocky, I didn't realise that Lucid is going to be a Long Term Release. I thought that LT editions of Ubuntu happened every 3 years and unless I'm mistaken HH was launched in April 2008 which would mean that the next LTR is scheduled for for April of next year.

 

Support is 3 years, but a new LTS is released every 2.

Quick view of the release cycle:
http://www.ubuntu.com/products/ubuntu/release-cycle

 

That's great news! I think I'll just install it and leave it there for the the full cycle rather than go changing every 6 months. One drawback is that it won't have Gnome 3 as far as I know.

 

I bet you can't do that. You're a~Phrase removed~ of distros just like the rest of us. . Actually I patrol DistroWatch about 6 or 7 times a day hoping to find a new release that might interest me. Sad but true.

Later...

 

LOL, too funny because I'm not far behind you "Only" 4-5 times a day for me

 

Fedora has a very fast installer but I have had update problems with it when I was trying it out so I could never get the 300 something updates for it.

 

PCLOS & OpenSuse were the only distros of the top 8 or so I tested about a year and a half ago that detected my WiFi card OOTB. And for me PCLOS is a much more pleasurable experience.

 

are you behind the proxy server

cheater87

did you try

these guides

http://www.my-guides.net/en/content/view/125/26/1/2/

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Docs/Drafts/SoftwareManagementGuide/CustomizingYum

if you are not behind the proxy

you can do remove fast mirror

#yumclean all



it will clean all your yum junkes left

su -c 'yum remove yum-fastestmirror'

# yum install yumex (gui mode)

for yumex update error its a bug in gtk2 which is resolved but if your yum crash you can do

su-c 'yum remove gtk2-immodule-xim'

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=548827

yes i agree some there little trouble but in fedora forums if you write your problem and try to search your problem i find the solution

i also recommend all users of fedora and other distro to use bleachbit its clean junks you can clean yum from it

its like ccleaner in linux


http://bleachbit.sourceforge.net/

 

Mandriva, but that's also a personal choice, because I'm a KDE freak, and there's no other distro that does such a good job with KDE than Mandriva. Also they have something called "Cooker" (for advanced users)...a parallel distribution that reflects all the work in progress between two official releases, constantly updated (ie can be several times a day)...some people run both the official Mandriva and Cooker, just to keep an eye on the bleeding edge...some like me run just Cooker because it's really interesting. The downside is once an official version is out (once every six months), you've already seen everything I wouldn't advise Cooker to anyone of course, but Mandriva (stable) yes. If I had to choose another distro that would be Suse or Fedora

 

I have to vote for Ubuntu, unlike Mrk's comments on Ubuntu cons, I find that Ubuntu is the one distro (out of dozens) that always seems to have zero issues or problems for me, no bugs, etc. So my best experience has been with Ubuntu for years now.

 

From the top five, I'd have to say I like openSuse the most. But from all distros, Slackware is my all time favorite (in fact, that is the one I have installed on my computer now).

 

After testing them for personal use, my own conclusion was:

1.openSUSE
2.Fedora
3.Mint
4.Ubuntu
5.Mandriva

I would definitely change some of them though, Pardus would be second and Chakra third in my list.

 

I think that which distro is best depends on your needs and your hardware. There is no single answer.
Ubuntu and OpenSuse run great on my Machines, but Fedora and Mandriva have a poor history.
I find Ubuntu has the best to use desktop, but find any of the major distros Gnome desktops perfectly fine to use.
I have suffered from previous versions of Yaast being broken in Opensuse. PackageKit in Fedora not allowing me to install Java. Synaptic/apt been flawless over the years.

Cheers, Nick

 

Inspired by this thread and Mrkovonic's article I have created a series of Linux related polls for people to vote on:

Linux: Which distro offers the best INSTALLATION experience ?
Linux: Which distro offers the best DESKTOP LOOKS experience ?
Linux: Which distro offers the best SOFTWARE MANAGEMENT experience ?
Linux: Which distro offers the best OUT OF THE BOX experience ?
Linux: Which distro offers the best SECURITY experience ?
Linux: Which distro offers the best PERFORMANCE experience ?
Linux: Which distro offers the best EASE OF USE experience ?
Linux: Which distro offers the best STABILITY experience ?
Linux: Which distro offers the best SUPPORT experience ?
Linux: Which distro offers the best GRAPHICS SUPPORT experience ?
Linux: Which distro offers the best NETWORK SUPPORT experience ?

Cheers, Nick