Ask HN: Alternative to Ubuntu? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Alternative to Ubuntu?

#11

Post by sebphfx » Sun, Apr 29, 2012, 7:42 PM UTC

imaginationac wrote: post #7

wr1472 wrote: post #2

I've heard Linux Mint is a good alternative to Ubuntu not tried it personally though.

I'm using Linux Mint at the moment. I chose it after upgrading Ubuntu to 12.04 when things became unstable. Linux Mint is pretty good so far. It's stable, and uses a mix of Gnome 3 and MATE for the desktop environment.

I'm also using Mint but LMDE, the debian version with XFCE as a desktop. Cinnamon looks alright but XFCE is nice on Mint.

Re: Ask HN: Alternative to Ubuntu?

#12

Post by gaius » Sun, Apr 29, 2012, 7:50 PM UTC

Ubuntu was always just a Debian knock-off with a different theme, why not go for the original and the best?

http://www.debian.org/

Re: Ask HN: Alternative to Ubuntu?

#13

Post by samuellittley » Sun, Apr 29, 2012, 8:10 PM UTC

Arch may not be the system for complete beginners, but if you've been on Ubuntu since 8.04 (4 years I think), you'll definitely know enough to set it up.

The Arch wiki and user guides are fantastic, I've not yet found anything that there wasn't a wikipage for.

The whole point of arch is that you only install exactly what you need, but you also have access to the latest and greatest packages. Plus the AUR system is so much better than PPAs...

Re: Ask HN: Alternative to Ubuntu?

#14

Post by dkuntz2 » Sun, Apr 29, 2012, 9:23 PM UTC

I use Arch and have gotten two other developers to switch to it from Ubuntu and Xubuntu, they also think it's awesome.

The reason I switched to Arch was because Unity breaks all sorts of Gnome things, and I didn't want to use Unity. I love Arch.

Re: Ask HN: Alternative to Ubuntu?

#15

Post by jaybill » Sun, Apr 29, 2012, 9:25 PM UTC

I like lubuntu a lot, but LXDE is a little harder to tweak than Gnome 2.

Re: Ask HN: Alternative to Ubuntu?

#16

Post by kristianp » Sun, Apr 29, 2012, 9:45 PM UTC

I switched to Kubuntu after running Ubuntu up until the unity releases. It's not as close to the windows shortcuts as ubuntu 10.04, and some things don't work as well. For instance 'safely removing' a USB drive doesn't power the drive down.

Re: Ask HN: Alternative to Ubuntu?

#17

Post by cryptolect » Mon, Apr 30, 2012, 12:28 AM UTC

Give Fedora a shot.

Re: Ask HN: Alternative to Ubuntu?

#18

Post by Wilduck » Thu, May 03, 2012, 9:05 PM UTC

dkersten wrote: post #6

My Linux distro of choice is Arch. I know a lot of people who have switched to Arch and everyone seems to like it a lot. If you don't want something quite as hands on as Arch, I've also been hearing good things about Mint.

Since Arch doesn't come with a window manager out of the box, while you're trying new things, try installing a tiling window manager as well. Awesome[1] and Xmonad[2] are both good choices. If you want to be a power user of your window manager, you'll want to check out a tiling WM at some point.

[1] http://awesome.naquadah.org/

[2] http://xmonad.org/