Linux advice

[Slippyblade]

I am a long time windows user but am truly hating the path it is taking with walled gardens and app stores in the future.  I've wanted to look at Linux for a long time but am lost in the sea of distro's.

Any advice on which distro to look at as a desktop replacement for my windows machine?  I don't do a ton of stuff on my desktop machine, MAME is in a dedicated cabinet so that is not an issue.  I do, however, play a lot of retro PC stuff via DOSbox through GOG.com...  (love that site)

Help, advice, comments?

[boomerbrian]

Ubuntu or Mint would be my choices. I run Ubuntu on my laptop and it works great.

[Slippyblade]

I guess the question becomes, why?  What do those distro's have/not have that others don't?

Sorry, not trying to be thick.  Just new to that particular scene.

[Player 3]

I guess the question becomes, why?  What do those distro's have/not have that others don't?

Sorry, not trying to be thick.  Just new to that particular scene.

If you tried a mainstream one, you almost tried them all. It's just default features and stability that have people.

Ubuntu is pretty much the most supported of all the distros. Arch is its own circlejerk, constantly referring it to others whenever this kind of question comes up (and thus tarnishing Linux reputation). As for my opinion, Debian, Mint, or Fedora would be good things to start with. Or Elementary OS. It's something I'd like to try out but can't thanks to how this laptop works. Plus Elementary is Ubuntu-based, so any problems you have for it can be solved by Ubuntu gurus.

Ubuntu has Unity, part of GNOME 3. Unity is under fire in a way similar to the interface formerly called Metro to Windows 8. Mint has both options with GNOME 2 and 3. Elementary OS appears to go by GNOME 2.

Anything Ubuntu-based will soon be supported by Valve Inc., major gaming company known for Steam.

[boomerbrian]

Ubuntu and Mint are two very popular distros and both are great for desktops.

[MonMotha]

Basically, you've got two camps in the Linux world at this point: Debian derived and Red Hat derived (I'm ignoring the semi-popular Gentoo and Slackware, for the time being - you can experiment with those later if you like).  They both run the same kernel and desktop stuff, but they generally take a totally different approach to everything under the hood.  As far as "consumer" oriented derivatives,  you're most likely to run into Ubuntu (Debian derived) and Fedora (Red Hat derived).  What you like ends up being to some degree personal preference.  Both are reasonably decent at getting everything to "just work" out of the box.

I tend to prefer Debian's internals to Red Hat's, mostly out of familiarity, so all of my stuff is currently running Debian proper, Ubuntu (a Debian derivative), or MINT (an Ubuntu or direct Debian derivative, depending on what flavor you pick).  Again, of those, Ubuntu is most likely to "just work", followed by MINT (not Debian edition), though I run LMDE and put up with having to occasionally fix minor things that break.

Unfortunately for new users, Linux hardware support tends to be "all or nothing".  Either it'll just plain work out of the box (drivers included), or you'll be in for a world of hurt trying to make it work.  Video cards are somewhat an exception to this, since both ATI and nVidia publish their own drivers that have to be distributed separately from the distribution.  Ubuntu, at least, provides a nice installer wizard to grab the appropriate driver for your system, if applicable.  Your best bet is to find a system known to work with your distribution of choice.  Laptops can be especially problematic, but there are options out there.  What "works" on your hardware may end up influencing your choice of distribution, so don't give up if the first one you try has issues.  Such issues are not usually insurmountable, but they can perplex new users.

In general, the "core" OS works quite well, which makes it popular on servers.  The desktop level stuff varies as to usability.  Unfortunately, the GNOME guys all went and jumped off a cliff recently, and mainstream Ubuntu followed them with Unity, so you may do better with a KDE using distro (e.g. Kubuntu) if you find GNOME 3 or Unity to not be to your liking in terms of desktop shell.

[the_gamer]

http://www.zegeniestudios.net/ldc/

[SavannahLion]

Google for "Livedisc Linux" or "LiveCD Linux". I have a handful myself for various reasons. If you're willing to lose a few discs and time burning them, these discs allow you to run, but not install, Linux onto a PC or Laptop and fiddle with whatever. The drawback is that load times tend to be a little slower and default passwords may not be obvious at first, I always forget the Knoppix defaults.

I would start with the suggestions from above. I've use quite a few. Ubuntu, SuSE, Red Hat, Slackware, Knoppix, Debian, and others. Don't be afraid to play around until you find what you like.

[danny_galaga]

I had good luck with Ubuntu, and I suck at teh technicalz...

[Slippyblade]

I guess one of my biggest stumbling blocks is the concept of "desktop".  With windows, there is one and that's pretty much it.  With Linux, there are several and I guess application use comes to mind.

I use OpenOffice on my windows computer.  Looking at Gnome and KDE as examples, is there a single version of OpenOffice that works on both, or are there separate versions depending on the desktop?  If so, that seems to be a HUGE reason linux hasn't really caught on with the avg home user...  I guess I'm just not totally clear on where the "OS" stops and the "desktop" starts.

[HaRuMaN]

Sounds like Ubuntu is right for you.

I'm currently using PCBSD but it's a bit more technical and not as easy as Ubuntu.

[Player 3]

I guess one of my biggest stumbling blocks is the concept of "desktop".  With windows, there is one and that's pretty much it.  With Linux, there are several and I guess application use comes to mind.

I use OpenOffice on my windows computer.  Looking at Gnome and KDE as examples, is there a single version of OpenOffice that works on both, or are there separate versions depending on the desktop?  If so, that seems to be a HUGE reason linux hasn't really caught on with the avg home user...  I guess I'm just not totally clear on where the "OS" stops and the "desktop" starts.

Those are "workspaces." I hear Macintoshes have those too. If you don't need that many, you can change them somewhere in the options. LibreOffice is better recommended as it's a continuation of OpenOffice. And Linux hasn't caught on because it hasn't been what people are used to. Sort of a chain reaction gig.

And agreeing with HaRu, Ubuntu is probably best for you with its catering to new people. Just learn how its file system works (root is /, not C:\), Unity, sudo, and all that stuff, and you'll be fine. It is a little more command line intensive.

[boomerbrian]

I guess one of my biggest stumbling blocks is the concept of "desktop".  With windows, there is one and that's pretty much it.  With Linux, there are several and I guess application use comes to mind.

I use OpenOffice on my windows computer.  Looking at Gnome and KDE as examples, is there a single version of OpenOffice that works on both, or are there separate versions depending on the desktop?  If so, that seems to be a HUGE reason linux hasn't really caught on with the avg home user...  I guess I'm just not totally clear on where the "OS" stops and the "desktop" starts.

Give Ubuntu a try. They have an app store where you can easily get software that works with it installed. Some of the others may have stores as well. They will have to chime in.

[MonMotha]

If by "desktop", you mean "virtual desktops" aka "workspaces", then as was pointed out, you can turn the number of them up or down.  UNIX guys have traditionally liked them a lot as they allow you to organize huge numbers of open windows more easily (I've counted something like 50 open windows on my Linux desktop before, and I wasn't trying to open lots).

If you mean the "desktop environment", then your big choices are GNOME or KDE.  Ubuntu's Unity is essentially a GNOME derivative with an alternate shell (ala some of the "alternate shells" for Windows that change the look and feel a bit but keep all the underlying bits the same).  GNOME and KDE are fairly separate implementations of basic desktop services like message passing, file management and common dialogs, etc.  You can only run one at a time, in general, but you can run e.g. a KDE application on GNOME or vice-versa with a small loss of integration.

OpenOffice in general integrates with GNOME more closely than KDE, but it's a largely monolithic suite owing to its StarOffice/Java heritage and behaves well on either.  Firefox is the same way.

Most of the mainstream distros seem to default to GNOME these days.  KDE seems to have somewhat better integration with GNOME oriented applications than GNOME does for KDE applications.

In general, there's a lot of choice.  There's so much, in fact, that it's almost a detriment.  The "Live" distributions are very handy to figure out what you want.  Many distros, like Ubuntu, actually use the "Live" system to run the installer.  Ubuntu literally just boots the "Live" environment with an icon on the desktop to run the installer.

Most distros will offer to repartition your drive for you and leave your existing Windows partition around so you can dual boot.  Some make it easier than others.  You should always back up your data, of course, but I've never lost data doing this.

[Slippyblade]

Thanks MonMotha, that answered the core of my desktop question. 

Data, I'm not to concerned about as I keep almost everything on separate partitions.  Though the question becomes, will Linux recognize the Fat32 and NTFS partitions that my data are on...  Hm, LiveCD it is to test.

Thanks a ton for the feedback guys.  I think I'll be making the plunge this weekend.

[MonMotha]

Linux has full support for FAT32 and has for ages.  Linux also has good support for NTFS these days and has for several years.  Obviously FAT32 doesn't support all the filesystem attributes you'd expected on a Linux system (ownership, permissions, ACLs, etc.), so everything will just show up with the same owner and permissions.  NTFS does support some of this stuff, but it doesn't map nicely to Linux style attributes, so the same trick is done.  For a single user system, this normally works fine.  Ubuntu should offer to bring these filesystems in for you if it doesn't just do it by default.

One thing to keep in mind: make sure you don't access these filesystems from Linux while Windows is "hibernated" (or vice versa).  I'll spare you the details and just say "It would be bad".

[danny_galaga]

If you are already using open office, there's nothing holding you back! I'm pretty sure it's cross platform...

[HaRuMaN]

If you are already using open office, there's nothing holding you back! I'm pretty sure it's cross platform...

It is.