A Question I received by PM - What Linux Distro would you recommend?

Tom M
Tom M
Joined: 2 Feb 06
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jay wrote: So, please

jay wrote:

So, please respond with your favorite or recommended Linux distribution!!

Jay,

It sounds like you want an "easy to install" Linux with the LTS version that doesn't use Snapd?

I remember something in my newsfeed or google.  Since I am not having issues with Snapd it is going to be second-hand advice at best.

I just googled "best Linux distro without snapd" and boy did that show up in some discussions.

On top of everything else, the respondents couldn't agree about which distros did NOT have snapd.

Looking at the top 50 listings some have had success with "LinuxMint."  In fact, it looks like LinuxMint is the most popular Distro when you exclude Ubuntu and Windows.

Another choice is  "Linux Fedora".

If you could suspend the updates on ArchLinux, would that take care of the "rolling release" issue?  Since I have no experience with ArchLinux I don't know if that is a reasonable idea or not.

HTH,

Tom M

 

 

 

A Proud member of the O.F.A.  (Old Farts Association).  Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.® (Garrison Keillor)

HAL
HAL
Joined: 9 Mar 20
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About three years ago I was

About three years ago I was running Seti@home and the Linux PC I was using for that project crashed bad and was unrecoverable. This being the case, I decided to investigate about 8 different Linux distros and start over with a clean slate, to see which one I wanted to change to (if any). I got Debian, SUSE, Linux Mint, Ubuntu, and several others I can't recall now.

I installed each one from scratch, and checked it out until I was satisfied that I got the feel of it. Several gave me problems installing, several I didn't like to use, and so on.

In the end I chose Linux Mint, because it gave the least problems and the best experience. Recently I was experimenting with video cards and I tried several in the Mint PC I'm using now typing this message. Some were Radeon others were NVidea. At no time changing to different cards did I experience a problem restarting Mint. It can connect to my NAS without any special configuration. I especially like the update manager which keeps the system up to date without muss or fuss.

Several weeks ago I found out that Apple TV bought the rights to some Friday night baseball games, and the team I wanted watch wasn't on cable but on Apple TV. I thought I'd try to watch the game on the Linux Mint PC. I logged into the Apple TV website using Firefox and I had no issues at all viewing the entire game with Linux Mint. And of course it runs this project using the Linux version of BOINC. I'm not saying other distros can't do these things, just stating my experience.

So, I haven't really had any issues with it. My advice is to try it and compare to other distros like I did, and choose the one you like.

Processing work units with "outdated" (according to Microsoft) Ryzen 7 1700

Peter van Kalleveen
Peter van Kalleveen
Joined: 15 Jan 19
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As a total linux noob i

As a total linux noob i struggled a lot with getting gpu's to work properly on almost all linux distro's i tried. (AMD pro cards).

So i ended up with HiveOS a mining focused ubuntu based distro that is easily changed to more general purpose and already has all the GPU drivers, gpu tuning software and even mobile app integration that just work wonderful. Was a lot less effort.

Tom M
Tom M
Joined: 2 Feb 06
Posts: 5585
Credit: 7673012902
RAC: 1745733

Peter van Kalleveen

Peter van Kalleveen wrote:

As a total linux noob i struggled a lot with getting gpu's to work properly on almost all linux distro's i tried. (AMD pro cards).

So i ended up with HiveOS a mining focused ubuntu based distro that is easily changed to more general purpose and already has all the GPU drivers, gpu tuning software and even mobile app integration that just work wonderful. Was a lot less effort.  I still am having to install the OCL drivers separately.

You are describing exactly what I like about Ubuntu 20 for Nvidia video cards.  Yes, you used to have to setup an alternate repository to easily get at the Nvidia drivers.  Now you don't.

My experience with AMD gpu cards and installing the video drivers under Ubuntu was mostly positive.  Except when it wasn't :)  And I still had to install the OCL drivers separately.

Tom M

A Proud member of the O.F.A.  (Old Farts Association).  Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.® (Garrison Keillor)

Tom M
Tom M
Joined: 2 Feb 06
Posts: 5585
Credit: 7673012902
RAC: 1745733

jay wrote: BUT I have soured

jay wrote:

BUT I have soured on Ubunto and the use of snapd,
Ubuntu has obfuscated the files I like to manually back up - bookmarks (Firefox) and addressbooks (Thunderbird).
 

I haven't really looked but would exporting the bookmarks and address books give you the same backup coverage?

Tom M

A Proud member of the O.F.A.  (Old Farts Association).  Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.® (Garrison Keillor)

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