An Idiot’s Tale of Choosing a Linux Distro

by David Risley on Sep 17, 2007 | 47 comments

I am a long-time Windows user. I started using Windows back with Windows 3.1. I went through 95, 98, served a brief prison sentence with Windows ME, moved to 2000, then XP, and now Vista. So, I’ve pretty much used them all. The newest incarnation (Vista) is a mixed bag, to say the least. On my notebook computer, Vista runs pretty well. On my desktop, it can be an annoying experience. I am actually contemplating bringing the desktop BACK to Windows XP Media Center (which is what it originally came with). Windows XP is SO much more dependable.

This mixed Vista experience (and of course the fact that I own and write for a tech website) has led me to pay more attention to Linux. Now, I have also thought about getting a Mac. I may do so at a later date, but I am pretty much resigned to the fact that I will have to pay through the nose in order to “share in the Apple experience”. Linux, on the other hand, is completely free. The problem is that I am not much of a Linux guy. Rich is more the Linux guy around here. I know just enough to be dangerous. So, I was confused by all the myriad of distros out there. There are just TONS of them. How the hell am I supposed to choose a Linux distro? And what did I ultimately settle on (for now)?

Read on…

Ubuntu Linux

The first distro I installed and tried was Ubuntu. Ubuntu has a lot of buzz surrounding it today. It is marketed as a replacement for Windows. The problem is that it is anything BUT a replacement for Windows. As far as Linux goes, it’s a fairly easy operating system to use. But, in my view, it isn’t too much better than other distros available today. In fact, in some ways, it’s not as good. I do like the Add/Remove feature in Ubuntu which allows easy installation and un-installation of applications. That is a life saver today, because installing programs in Linux is REALLY confusing when one is used to the simplicity of Windows.

Driver support was good, but not good enough. Ubuntu could not properly detect my video card, so I was using a big wide screen monitor with 1024×768 resolution. I thought that I could just install the driver and be done with it. Well, how Microsoft of me, I guess! I found an Nvidia driver, installed it, and NOTHING CHANGED. I ended up having to mess with the xorg.conf file in gedit to manually configure the monitor. And each time I restarted the desktop, the mouse cursor would disappear. I had to reboot the whole machine to get my cursor back. When all is said and done, I still did not get the display working correctly with Ubuntu.

Ubuntu has some nice plus points, but it is not a Windows replacement. If you stay inside the Ubuntu box, you’re fine. As soon as that box is not quite big enough, Ubuntu shows it’s true Linux, command-line loving roots.

Kubuntu Linux

I tried Kubuntu as well. Kubuntu and Ubuntu are exactly the same except that Ubuntu use the Gnome desktop and Kbuntu uses KDE. So, essentially its the same operating system with a different face. But, I actually prefer KDE, so I thought I would give Kubuntu a try. Well, being that it is the same Ubuntu core, I had the same driver problems.

I do want to mention that Ubuntu and Kubuntu both have very user-friendly installations. The distro I ultimately installed to my computer had a more confusing installation, but the Ubuntu products have it down in that department.

Linspire and Freespire

Somehow these distros ended up on my radar. It seems these things have been really overshadowed by Ubuntu, but they caught my eye because the company has really tried to make the Linspire products a true Windows replacement. For example, they are not opposed to putting proprietary software into their distro. Thank you! Generally, I really admire how the open source community tries to do everything for free. But, sometimes proprietary is the best way to get the job done. In my opinion, the Linux community sometimes shoots itself in the foot by being so anti-commercialism.

Linspire is built on top of the Ubuntu 7.04 core. What they did, though, was add CNR, the KDE desktop, some specially coded applications, codecs and proprietary drivers. CNR is the software library provided by Linspire. It provides one-click installation of Linux software into the Linspire operating system. Most of the stuff in the library is free, but they do include some commercial software (usually at a discount).

My hope with Freespire was to provide enough of a commercial mix to Linux to make it easier to use. Problem is, not everything worked. For example, when I tried to search CNR for something, I simply got the same screen to reload. That was completely useless. And aside from that, I was having the same driver problems at the start. So, there I was with some annoyances but no easy way to fix it. So, it just didn’t seem polished enough for me.

PC Linux OS

Rich gave me this distro on a CD. I tried it out and I was impressed. Right away, it properly detected my video card and monitor and displayed at the native resolution of my monitor. By this point, this was a welcome relief because most other distros couldn’t get it right. Now, it didn’t QUITE get it right. While showing at the right resolution, the driver was not supporting any of the 3D capabilities of the card. This meant that I could not enable Beryl (which is built in). So, I used the Synaptic package manager to download and install Nvidia proprietary drivers. I restarted the desktop and I was able to enable Beryl with no problems at all. I was floored. So far, PC Linux OS seemed to be awesome. It didn’t have a nice add/remove feature like Ubuntu, but it did have the package manager. I’ll trade the fancy software library for working hardware any time.

The installation of PC Linux OS was not as user-friendly as that of Ubuntu. I was scared that it would format and overwrite Windows and I saw nothing which walked me through it in the install. But, by this point, I was happy with PCLinuxOS so I wanted to install it. I installed a spare SATA drive into my computer and gave the installation permission to format the whole drive. It worked fine and I am now dual booting PC Linux OS alongside Windows XP on my spare Gateway.

Long Story Short

If I am going to use Linux, I need to be able to get my work done on it without being confused. I am a very computer literate guy, but I am also a Windows guy. Linux is a different world, and quite frankly, I didn’t WANT it to be that different. If I have to open up Terminal and type anything into a command line, I’m angry. This is 2007, guys, and I see no reason why I should have to do anything by command line in a modern operating system. Ubuntu is the latest craze in Linux, but it is that distro that caused me to have to learn some of the command line functions. It was ridiculous.

In the end of this latest trek into the Linux world, I come out of it with PC Linux OS installed to my computer. It works well, it detected my hardware properly, and (like magic) I haven’t had to touch the command line even once.

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Bar-Shalom
Hey Dave,
Why not try Xandros. Its’ not free but is very easy to use distro.
Scott
What’s wrong with command line? In a lot of cases, it’s a hell of a lot more versatile than a GUI. The only difference is that you actually have to learn the command line, whereas with a GUI you can learn on-the-fly as all of the options are printed on the screen. Same story with manual configuration.
After learning the Unix/Linux command line, I’ve found that there are many things I can do in that would take me 2x longer to do via GUIs in Windows. (I can type one line as opposed to modifying check-boxes in several separate windows)
The whole point of Linux and OSS is choice. You can do whatever the hell you want to your OS and software. The problem is that this choice comes with a learning curve, and only computer enthusiasts really care about or understand the benefits of these offerings.
Case in point: After reading your initial graphics display problems in Ubuntu, I thought of 3 different possible fixes that you didn’t cover.
Granted, I’m a Computer Engineering/Biology double major, know several programming languages and like to learn this stuff for fun (I currently use Slackware Linux), so maybe I’m a bit unusual in this respect.
Linux will probably never be a viable competitor to Windows on the Desktop. It’s designed by geeks, who generally have a hard time understanding how the average person thinks about computers. However, as a server OS, it’s hard to beat.
Pete
I’ve met a few of these people who think the shell (“command line”) is somehow antiquated and has no place in their idea of a modern operating system. Not surprisingly, they’re all Windows guys. MSDOS had a command line and no pictures or pretty colors. Therefore, they associate the command line with monochrome antiquity.
In fact, computers are far too complex and powerful for all their capabilities to be effectively mapped to a two- or even three-dimensional video busybox. There will always be a need for a shell by which the knowledgeable computer user can punch through the candy coating to access the rest of the machine.
Funny, unix has its GUIs as well, but nobody in the unix community has ever proposed abandoning the shell. What a ridiculous idea. Why throw away the most powerful tool in the box?
Open Source Man
One thing you must keep in mind. If you want to run Linux, you need to have Linux friendly hardware. You don’t run out and try to install OsX on a Windows machine do you? I think it is silly when people try to install Linux on hardware that isn’t supported well by the Linux community. If you have poorly supported hardware, you will get mixed results, depending on your distro.
I like to play with open-source software. As usual, I have more than one Linux distro installed on my machine. Right now I have Mandriva, Ubuntu, Kubuntu, and I have one unused partition waiting for another distro. One thing I have learned is it really doesn’t matter what distro you have, it’s all the same open source software.
To get your video drivers working in Ubuntu, there is a nice program called Envy. It does everything and more for you in a nice Windows kinda way. When it is done you even have the NVidia controls installed in the “System Tools” menu. All you have to do is click “Yes” and “Next” through the whole install, just like in Windows.
If you want to experiment with Linux, install Mandriva. It will install KDE, Gnome, and a couple other windows managers. It also installs the KDE and Gnome versions of most software.
I have an Electrical Engineering degree, so I am very technically inclined, but that doesn’t mean I like the command line. Who has time to memorize all the commands for all the software out there. I prefer GUI’s, however, at times the command line is way easier.
sk
give Linux Mint a try
patrickg
Hi Dave,
I have lots of problems with my video card, too. Distros that have detected and displayed correctly (for me) include the following:
Elive
Sabayon
Linux Mint
Pardus
Wolvix.
All these worked straight off the bat, a blessed relief. There’s lots I like about Ubuntu, but they are still missing the boat by making people with cards that _only_ run on fglrx, have to get down and dirty for things to work.
Chris Pollard
I’ve been using linux at home 100% windows-free for a few years now. PCLinuxOS was the first REAL contender for my everyday desktop, although I had started out in Mandrake 8/9 dual-booting years earlier.
SimplyMEPIS is another great distro that I used for a while, but Warren was always playing catch-up with the latest and greatest. Okay, CURRENT. It was always behind because of the Debian tie, part of the reason he tried going ‘buntu as the base.
I also used Kubuntu on my desktop for a few months, but never found it satisfying. Nothing was ever quite ‘right’. So when Texstar got the first betas of PCL 2007 out, I was hooked once again. PCLOS 2007 has been running FLAWLESSLY for me. The repos may not be as big as the *buntu crowd’s, but they DO have everything I need in them. And if there’s something you need that isn’t there, you can just ask for the package in the support forums and Tex or his devs will often make it available if enough people want it. That’s service!!
PCLinuxOS is bar none the best linux distro I’ve ever used. The buntus get all the hype, but I found them a real PITA to configure and make work the way I wanted them too. And that was with several years of OTHER distros under my belt!
http://none Mike
It is different. For us that like it. The difference is nice. If you like XP, use it. It works fine for the majority of PC users in the world. If you really want something different, equally as useful, but different, use Linux and only Linux for a few months. It is likely you won’t go back.
http://drgeorge.org George F. Rice
Actually, I tend to drop to the Windows command line more than I do Linux, and for exactly the same reason you did with Ubuntu – “something” goes wrong, and that’s the best way to fix it on *any* OS.
Nonetheless, I’m pleased you found a distribution of Linux that works well for you. One MAJOR advantage of Linux over Windows is *choice* – if you don’t like the one you have, you can always try the next one on the list. With Windows, the list is only one item long.
Isn’t freedom sweet?
http://ben.timby.com btimby
David, like most users the command line scares you. I understand, I lived this way once, however, I decided to learn to use the command line on Linux. Of course, being a Windows developer, I was mighty familar with it anyway.
The command line is the best thing ever. I get way more done by typing than I do using a mouse. I spend 10% of my time in a GUI now, the GUI just lets me open about 100 terminals for getting my work done.
Check it out.
stan
The first distro you installed and tried was ubuntu, had problems and decided that it wasn’t much better than the other distros (which of course you hadn’t tried yet.) You never got it working properly but decided you prefer Gnome over KDE.
I use PCLinux OS. It is the best distro I have tried and I have been a disto hopper for a couple of years, so I agree with your assestment of that OS. However I feel that perhaps your writing talents lean more toward a fiction writer base on the pure bs of your article.
Chris
There is _NOTHING_ wrong with using the command line. I work for a company that is 99% Windows, and I routinely use the command line. For example, if I need to get my IP address, it’s a hell of a lot easier to type “ipconfig” at the command line than anything else. Another example, if I need to find the user logged into a workstation and the netbios name of the workstation, and I only have the IP…. nbtstat -A IPADDY. Done.
GUIs are a crutch. They allow joe-schmoe to use his computer, but not actually command it. A GUI makes the OS the controller, not the controllee. The command line always has been, and always will be, more powerful than a GUI, no matter what OS you use. OSX, Windows, Linux, BSD, etc…
I routinely show my boss at work, a 10 year Windows engineer, all these things he can do at a command line in 5 seconds… Things that would take him 5 minutes to do pointing and clicking. Like it or not, the command line has been around a lot longer than GUIs, and have had a lot more time to mature. No matter which OS you choose, a GUI will always be a crutch.
James
Well, sometimes a change in using a tool as in this case a new OS requires a change in mindset and the way in doing things. The reason for having an alternative OS or software, besides being free and open, is to try to approach a problem and do things differently in hope that it is better. Software developers will have ideas of creating a good software and even they backtrack on their ideas and often redo their programs. Linux is an OS unlike Windows and it will never be like Windows. What’s the point of being like Windows since we know what’s wrong with Windows? You really need to face the fact that Linux requires the users to change the way we do things.
TangoMikeMike
LINUX is NOT Windows….
kewldude
I agree with Scott. Linux will not make it big in desktop and in server world it is good.
Although I am bi-os(ual) [my term of saying i use both linux and windows where appropriate], I do admire the architecture or windows and its ease of use and ability to get things done without confusing the hell. Linux is about freedom. We are free to chose and do whatever we want. Mostly we want things done with ease and be secure. So for few things Linux is damn good as compared to windows.
A desktop user dont want “possible fixes”. Possible is the biggest drawback of opensource. It may or may not work. Windows will and always with me has worked the way it was supposed to be.
Dave
I can see your point, but at one point you had to learn how to use windows as well. I have a Dell laptop that is probably about a year old that I (used) to dual boot with XP, then later Vista. After a fresh windows install, none of my hardware was detected, no wireless, NIC, sound, Card Reader etc. But I have learned through the years of using windows how to remedy this, you download the drivers, install-reboot, install-reboot until all the exclamation points are gone in device manager.
The same can be said for Linux. Ubuntu happens to detects all of my laptops hardware out of the box accept the video card, but through my years of using Linux I know how to remedy this as well. And soon I had 3D and beryl etc.
I guess my point is, Windows, Linux, OSX etc. they are all different operating systems and have different ways of doing things. At one point you had to learn the ins and outs of Windows until you felt comfortable with it. You cant expect Linux to act like Windows because it isn’t Windows. If you want to spend the time getting to know Linux like you have with Windows you may like it, then again you may not.
Crow
I’ve been a PCLinuxOS user for almost a year, and believe me I tried many distros before, it’s a hopper stoper.
Now, I don’t use windows anymore. I’m not a programer, for me the computer it’s a tool that help me to do my work and sometimes a center for recreation also.
PCLinxOS has a plus, the community in the forums, where there is not a stupid question, just questions and respectful answers.
http://linuxglobe.wordpress.com Mark McLaughlin
I have a LINUX blog called linuxglobe.wordpress.com, I write about Linux from a Writer’s point of view, I am not a Programmer, just an Advanced User! I highly recommend Fedora 7, it is a replacement for Windoze and a supplement to MAC OS X! It is the offspring of the defunct Red Hat Linux, research it at http://fedoraproject.org...
http://suse.ehelp.pl resus
Have You tried openSUSE ? The finale stable version 10.3 will be available on Oct 4th in this year.
IMHO is much frendier distro than the others
http://en.opensuse.org/Welcome_to_openSUSE.org
– most of the things You can play around using YAST – graphical interface with 100 modules to configure Your desktop and server.
Of course installation its sometimes annoying but the after that – windows and other dstros doesent count.
soryy for my english
@Scott
“Linux will probably never be a viable competitor to Windows on the Desktop”
no, you wrong – its matter of time … when game geeks developers finaly will see that… the rest You can write yourself
“It’s designed by geeks, who generally have a hard time understanding how the average person thinks about computers.”
happily the geeks starteg listening the users => hello – KDE 4 :> and maybe openSUSE 11
SteveOC
I can understand that if you have been a Win-person for long enough, the command line must seem like an antiquated anachronism in the year 2007. Indeed, dropping to a ‘cmd’ shell in windows is a PITA, and often a frustrating experience. That mostly because the windows command prompt is so … useless.
However, take your time to get used to the power of a Unix shell, and you may come to realise that the command line is in fact a Killer-App that sets linux well apart from Windows. Sure, there are a lot of strange little commands available from the command line that (on their own) seem to be fairly useless. But string them together, and you soon discover that you have the most amazingly powerful tool at your fingertips. In the Unix world – the command line is like having a handful of magic nano-dust that you can chuck at a problem and reduce it to something simple.
Here are some tiny examples of some tasks that you can do from the unix command line with a 1-liner, which are just not possible to do under a pointy-clicky interface :
- Ouch, im running out of diskspace! give me a list of just directory names which currently contain over 300MB of data.
- Go (recursively) through this directory, and for every image that you find (in jpg,gif,png format), create a thumbnail image 256 pixels high in .gif format, add a watermark to the image based on the filename, and store the thumbnail in this other directory over here. There might be a dozen images, or there might be millions of them.
- Get a list of names out of this SQL database over here, generate a .wav file for each one that says ‘Hello _name_’, and then email that generated file to each of them in turn.
- Go through the the 300,000+ files on this CD, and for whichever files are ascii text files (regardless of file name extension), replace the spelling of ‘center’ with ‘centre’, eject the CD, and then burn a new CD with the fixed up files.
- Dont want my flatmates using my internet connection whilst Im out tonight – so at 6pm, turnoff the ethernet controller (to disable all web access). Turn it back on after 4am, when I expect to get home.
We are NOT talking about writing programs here – these are just 1-liners that you can type in at the command prompt once you discover the magic. You dont need any fancy add-on applications to do any of this – its all there with a vanilla install of Linux. Its quite powerful. Of course, if you want to write a batch file or a more powerful scripted program, things can get a whole lot more powerful ! Then of course, you can get into real programming and even modify the kernel if you want.
You might say ‘Thats just excessive – I dont ever need to do anything that complicated !!’ .. well have a think about that comment. Do you genuinely NOT need to do things like this on Windows, because doing them would be too hard or way too time consuming ? When you find that doing things like this is really easy – you will find yourself doing it more and more. When something hideous raises its head, you can confidently think ‘Ah yeah – I reckon I can do that’, and off you go. No need to write a program, no need to scour the internet for some special utility program, no need to sit there for hours clicking the mouse in some repetitivve machine-like fashion.
With good command line competence, you will find yourself infinitely more productive than Windows ever allowed you to be. A GUI+mouse is great for some tasks, but it quickly gets in the way when the task at hand is large scale and requires repeatable precision. Any of the examples I listed above could be done purely by clicking around in explorer and doing things manually using the basic tools that come with Windows, but would take hours if not days, and mistakes would be common.
So please, have a think and be prepared to spend some time with that ‘Old fashioned stone-age command line’. You might well be overlooking something incredibly valuable
http://Softwareinstallation Steffen
Sigh – is softwareinstallation really difficult? I right click a package in Konqueror and select “install” (OpenSuse).
The software installation system in UNIX/LINUX is far more sophisticated than anything MS has ever offered. For example, you actually can get a list of the files getting installed, after an installtion you can see which file belongs to which software and so on.
You might have a look at the packetmangement system
http://none xxx
who said that type commands is not modern ? is a super duper windows gui more modern that type a simple and clear command well documented and specific for a task command ?
who said it was more functional pick everithing with the mouse and get your hand stressed that type some 5 or 6 letters ?
Horibal
I must just be lucky, but after using Ubuntu (and the other ‘buntus), Xandros, Mint, Dream, Suse, and a few others, I’ve only had a problem with a driver once. That was with Ubuntu Edgy. It worked, but I needed the Nvidia drivers for Beryl. It took some effort but not much thanks to the ‘buntu forums. Feisty was even easier to set up. I use Ubuntu Feisty exclusively on my desktop and laptop and have had no issues since. My lack of problems may be that I fully embraced Linux and read 3 books on it during my transition. RTFM, anyone? Since I’ve seen the “Total Moron’s Guide to Windows” in several book stores I know people buy those to learn Windows. The soloutions for nearly any issue in Linux is as close as google. It sounds as though the author was not so much trying to convert as dabble. If you only dabble (and expect basicially a free MS OS) you’ll be lost for a while. If you’re really interested, do some research. But as I said before, maybe I’m just lucky and should start playing the lottery.
Ron Nielsen
Linux is not windows. I’ve been using Mepis for years. Did you learn how to use windows overnight? I can do alot more on my linux box than I ever thought about in windows and not have to worry about all of windows viruses and malware (without the command line) I’m tired of these people expecting Linux to be exactly like windoze and then complaining when it’s not. It’s better – just give yourself a little time to learn
Oleg
As with any other *different* technology one needs to invest time in learning it. There was no real sense to try tens of distros if you are not ready to spend time on any of them to learn it a bit. You could get any of them doing the job for you if you wanted, yet what you wanted was to complain that they are all bad. If this is so, do you think anybody will whine if you go back to Windows? No body will give a damn. And this is the real question: why would anybody bother if you are going to be a Linux user (“If I am going to use Linux…”). It is like you think every body else cannot wait to see you or some other ignorant person to be a Linux user. What is in it for us? What is in there for me, being perfectly fine with *any* OS, from the fact that you are or you are not going to use Linux? The technology *is* there, it was not designed for you specifically and it is not a question if *you* specifically is going to use it as there are many people who find that it serves their needs, pretty much any distribution. And those people are also happy with the way this technology is evolving.