[PLUG] Distro suggestions

Sun Jun 30 03:27:50 UTC 2019

Mint put a lot of effort into the 'it just works' area. Without
knowing more about what the OP plans to do with this laptop it is by
far the best option on the list of 4 distros he gave.

To be perfectly honest I think centos is not a laptop distro, not
because it won't work, but because it doesn't focus the userland
stuff. It really sucks when you realize that you need to update your
OS just to read your new android phone.... libMTP gets out of date
really fast. You could roll your own package, but that's a bit
excessive for getting your phone to work.

The original purpose of mint was to solve a lot of the little issues
that canonical wasn't interested in fixing, which is a bonus in my
book :-)

On Sat, Jun 29, 2019 at 8:20 PM Vedanta Teacher
<orevedantateacher at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Your mileage might vary but; I use Linux Mint Cinnamon 19.X
>
> Why? I'm not an "industry insider", I still work full time in a
> factory (making components for memory chips in cell phones),
> I'm out of town frequently, my parents are elderly & frequently
> ill, etc, etc, I just have a full plate.
>
> The ISO is easy to download & install, they have a large database
> of programs to download & install, most things can be done through
> GUI, there is a large community to query if there are questions, etc.
> In computer terms: "It just works".
>
> You can also make the desktop environment very 'clean' or 'lean' I.E.
> free of clutter. Years ago I used Ubuntu but the desktop looked too cartoon
> like.
>
> And if Wes is reading they cleaned up the habit of Mint Cinnamon of
> hoarding Kernels and clogging up the system, it was in one of their
> postings if I remember. I don't need to go into sudo every couple
> of months to clean things.
>
> Blessings,
>
> Paul W.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Sat, Jun 29, 2019 at 7:12 PM King Beowulf <kingbeowulf at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On 6/29/19 9:20 AM, David Fleck wrote:
> > > For reasons not necessary to go into here, this long-time
> > FreeBSD/OpenSUSE user needs to move to a new laptop* Linux distribution,
> > and I have the following choices:
> > > CentOS
> > > Fedora
> > > Mint
> > > Ubuntu
> > >
> > > I use CentOS in a text console / server at work, and it seems okay; I'm
> > not familiar with the others at all. I seem to remember Ubuntu being
> > described as more Windows-y than most distros, which I don't care for. But
> > I'd like suggestions as to the pros/cons of the four listed above as laptop
> > OS'es specifically.
> > >
> > > (*ThinkPad Edge E531)
> > >
> >
> > On 6/29/19 5:18 PM, wes wrote:> however I would point out that Canonical
> > is big enough to
> > > interact with Microsoft at a high level and not be swallowed whole by
> > them.
> > According to financial data, Microsoft is big enough to purchase
> > Canonical with cash.  Thus, the joint venture (Windows subsystem for
> > Linux) can very much result in MS acquiring Canonical whole or in part.
> > After all, IBM gobbled up Red Hat.  I'm surprised MS hasn't nabbed a
> > distro yet.
> >
> > As for "Distro suggestions,"
> >
> > 1. Make a list of what you need to do on the laptop
> > 2. consider bleeding edge or whether stability, long time support (LTS)
> > is needed.
> > 3. need a binary software repository, from source or compile yourself?
> > 4. Do you need extensive support resources?
> > 5. Stick with what you know.
> >
> > Go with CentOS. It will work fine and you are already familiar with it.
> > Where Fedora is the upstream bleeding edge edition feeding Red Hat,
> > CentOS is basically the free community edition of Red Hat.  An
> > interesting post here:
> > https://www.linux.org/threads/linux-org-is-sticking-with-centos.20515/
> >
> > Also, this fetish in the Linux community "that your kernel and
> > libraries can fall behind the curve after a while" on LTS type distros
> > is nonsense.  Few here on this list run bleeding edge hardware where you
> > may need the latest kernel etc for support. Same goes for much of the
> > F/OSS toolchain and software. For distro included application software,
> > again, that depends on you use case as to how new it needs to be. New
> > and bleeding edge is not necessarily better.
> >
> > [shameless plug]
> > From the specifications of your ThinkPad Edge E531, I'd run
> > Slackware64-14.2, but that's just me (and a few other nut jobs here).
> > Released in 2016, Slackware has received updates (security and other as
> > needed) EVERY MONTH. As have versions back to 14.0 (released 2012!) . It
> > has a vibrant community for support, lot's of software on the install
> > DVD/USB (you may not need anything else), and Slackbuilds.org to take
> > the sting out of 3rd party software installation.  I have it running on
> > a 20yr old HP P4 as a server, Lenovo P510 laptop, Lenovo Thinkscentre MT
> > as a media center, MSI Atom netbook, and my home built i7-6850K box
> > (32GB DDR4, 6TB HDs, 2 nvidia GPUs, 3 LCD, etc etc for hobby (science,
> > games) and normal household work).
> > http://www.slackware.com/security/list.php?l=slackware-security&y=2019
> > [\shameless plug]
> >
> > Some interesting reading:
> > https://www.centos.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=514
> > https://hackaday.com/2018/01/30/making-the-case-for-slackware-in-2018/
> > https://www.slant.co/versus/2705/7505/~slackware_vs_centos
> > https://blog.microlinux.fr/slackware-centos/
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > PLUG mailing list
> > PLUG at pdxlinux.org
> > http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
> >
> _______________________________________________
> PLUG mailing list
> PLUG at pdxlinux.org
> http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug