Soo - I need some ideas for my next distro choice please?

Hello everyone, long time no see, but I'm back as I'm looking at changing my distro again.

At the moment I use Mint 9, however it isn't the most reliable distro. It is rather nice, clean and sleek, but I'm thinking of dare I say, more eye candy.

I don't like Unity to be honest, so that rules out Ubuntu 11. Mint 9 is an exception for me as I usually don't like KDE or Gnome and find XFCE distros 'nicer'.

I used to use dreamlinux back in the days before they made it bloated with the desktop editions. However I did enjoy it. I used to love Vixta, before it became Xange.


So I'm looking for a change, so far Vectorlinux looks nice.

I've looked at Mint, Ubuntu/xubuntu, opensuse, dreamlinux, thunar, pclinuxos, centos and vectorlinux while helping out someone else on making the jump to linux.

Are there any distros you would all recommend for me to look at? Screenshots would be nice.




Thanks in advance ...

Unlike MS Windows there is no law against a Linux user installing as many distros as one wishes. All Linux distros can fit in a hard disk with 16 partitions. Some nice ones can be installed beyond the 16th partition.

Every Linux boot loader has been created for multi-boot from the factory.

Since a PC user can have as many hard disks in the box so why not have many Linux distros too?

If you like Vector, give Salix-13.37 -- either the LXDE or the XFCE versions -- a looksee ( http://www.salixos.org/wiki/index.php/Home ).

+1 to our Mod -- at one time I had four hard drives with a different distro on each! Switching them was a cinch with the Shuttle KPC48 I had then.

Peppermint Two ( http://peppermintos.com ) and antiX ( http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=antix ) are others with which I am familiar that are worth investigating, IMHO.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by saikee

Unlike MS Windows there is no law against a Linux user installing as many distros as one wishes. All Linux distros can fit in a hard disk with 16 partitions. Some nice ones can be installed beyond the 16th partition.

Every Linux boot loader has been created for multi-boot from the factory.

Since a PC user can have as many hard disks in the box so why not have many Linux distros too?

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Hehehe I know what you mean, I have been a linux tart in the past, having loads of distros on the go.

But I'm looking for a main replacement, a new home OS which I will use as a sole home, on my home laptop.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by speelyi

If you like Vector, give Salix-13.37 -- either the LXDE or the XFCE versions -- a looksee ( http://www.salixos.org/wiki/index.php/Home ).

+1 to our Mod -- at one time I had four hard drives with a different distro on each! Switching them was a cinch with the Shuttle KPC48 I had then.

Peppermint Two ( http://peppermintos.com ) and antiX ( http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=antix ) are others with which I am familiar that are worth investigating, IMHO.

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Had a look at some screenies for salix and it isnt my cup of tea to be honest.

However thank you for the suggestion of peppermint, looks lovely, very polished and nice and from the promises on their page, seems very quick as well. Definitely worth a download and playabout with!

I've never thought of XFCE as having much eye candy. I think of Gnome and KDE for eye candy, and the newest Gnome is targetted more at embedded devices, not keyboard-and-mouse workstations anymore. I like KDE4 and its plasmoids for my home desktop.

You want more eye candy but don't want GNOME or KDE?

Your question confuses me.

However, it doesn't sound like you need a distro change, just a DM/WE change.

Can you just apt-get install gnome/kde/fluxbox/e17 on your current setup to try different ones out without re-installing a whole new OS?

For Heaven's sake, just go with Vector Linux. Extremely reliable, uses xfce 4.8 (most stable distros like slackware and stable debian stll use 4.6) has the eyecandy advantage of Cairodock, easier to get lots of software than with Slackware.

Con? It's not going to change for a long while.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by happybunny

You want more eye candy but don't want GNOME or KDE?

Your question confuses me.

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For good or ill, XFCE is gettng there, and when you add that Cairo docking bar in Vector Linux...

I love xfce because of the way you can configure the panel launchers to create custom drop down menus, and the problem that I used to have with the panels crashing and not coming back seems to have been fiixed. What keeps me coming back to KDE is the power of drag and drop in KDE is like no other. Drag and drop a file in gnome, it'll move if it can, if not it'll copy. In KDE, you get a menu: copy/move/link. More options, more control.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by wh666-666

. . .
However thank you for the suggestion of peppermint, looks lovely, very polished and nice and from the promises on their page, seems very quick as well. Definitely worth a download and playabout with!

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You're welcome. Peppermint uses LXDE and shines, doesn't it?

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Originally Posted by speelyi

You're welcome. Peppermint uses LXDE and shines, doesn't it?

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Hehehe yes, very nice and shiny. Seems OK for now, but I have it running off an old RW disc, need to buy some more tomorrow.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by blackbelt_jones

For Heaven's sake, just go with Vector Linux. Extremely reliable, uses xfce 4.8 (most stable distros like slackware and stable debian stll use 4.6) has the eyecandy advantage of Cairodock, easier to get lots of software than with Slackware.

Con? It's not going to change for a long while.

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For me, that con is a good thing. I dont like things changing every year or two.

Got it on download for the live disc v7. Hope it is as nice as the screenshots.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Pafnoutios

I've never thought of XFCE as having much eye candy. I think of Gnome and KDE for eye candy, and the newest Gnome is targetted more at embedded devices, not keyboard-and-mouse workstations anymore. I like KDE4 and its plasmoids for my home desktop.

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by happybunny

You want more eye candy but don't want GNOME or KDE?

Your question confuses me.

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I know. I mean technically KDE and Gnome are supposed to be better in terms of appearance, but in so many distros, I find something 'a bit off' with the text and the general feel of windows and borders. I cant put my finger on it, just something not quite right.

Mint is one of the few distros using Gnome or KDE that I like, well that and opensuse (but I got bored of that quickly).

Quote:

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Originally Posted by happybunny

However, it doesn't sound like you need a distro change, just a DM/WE change.

Can you just apt-get install gnome/kde/fluxbox/e17 on your current setup to try different ones out without re-installing a whole new OS?

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I was thinking of just installing something like cairo-dock or something, but I do have a slight issue in performance/stability/reliability I have noticed with just Mint itself:
- Sometimes, if you restart, the menu button disappears, being replaced with a clone of the quick launch bar
- Occasionally when shutting down, it will hang when it's unmounting the HDD.

that's seriously

Solus Os has definitely got my vote. It's based on gnome 2 and so is not the kind of garbage you see in the gnome 3 operating systems.

+1 for SolusOS

See attached!

my 2 cents
try fuduntu
it's got the desktop effects like the rotating cube,group screens with a mouse move,super slick,fast,clean and auto update,etc,etc,etc
it still uses gnome 2.32.0 and kernel 3.2.13
i walked away from ubuntu because of the global menus and unity in general but don't like gnome 3 either and kde it's just too much of headache for me.

I've switched to Linux Mint Debian Edition with XFCE4....works great except my "media keys" don't.

I ended up going with Xubuntu for now. It's solved all the issues in mint, the lappy wakes from standby properly, shuts down properly, prints all documents properly and works fine. Installed cairodock as well.

Only kicker is, I remembered to copy my home folder out, however I completely forgot about my bookmarks. Have a backup but only from a month back. Dang!

Linux Mint with Cinnamon all works fine so it is obviously an XFCE4 issue (with my media keys).

so looking for something with eyecandy,and something that is similar to the level of the original mentioned distros?
try pearOS- http://distrowatch.com/images/cgfjoewdlbc/pear.png
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=pear

stuck this on a USB stick besides matriux,backbox,DEFT,slackopuppy,porteus- and am fairly certain one more...despite being a live boot; pear booted up/shutdown quickly on mine and seemed to work very well,was going to install it but wanted to have a specialist OS that fitted interests better [matriux].
fans of OSX will love it as its exactly how OSX shoud be-if it had never been dumbed down.

Debian Squeeze or Wheezy. Use the net install, uncheck all options except basic system utilities and go. Reboot. Now you have a stable Linux base that has nothing loaded except what it takes to be a live system. Now apt-get anything you want and only what you want.

You wind up with a clean and mean install that isn't fluffed up with what somebody else thinks should be loaded onto your machine.