Let's talk about... Linux distros

I think it's time fore a switch. My last professional laptop (Dell Latitude D430, brand new circa 2007) I loaded with OpenSuse 10.3 with KDE 3.5. It was great, rock solid, unproblematic, and compatible with everything I wanted to do. Unfortunately Suse stop all official support of their old versions after a while so no new packages, etc. and upgrade options became more and more limited.

3 years later I installed a new personal laptop with brand new OpenSuse 11.4 and KDE4 (which was actually in beta at the time, not that the installer said anything about that while I was configuring it!) which... kinda sucked. Buggy and, by Linux standards, bloated. I eventually got it mostly working after, among other things, downgrading to KDE3.5 but it still has a bunch of issues.

Now I've got a "new" (old) field laptop that I want to throw something that works as well as OpenSuse 10.3 did on. I do extensive work from the console and will be using this thing to interface with scientific equipment via the serial & parallel ports a lot (exactly the same sorts of things I was doing before) and presumably compiling software and other linuxy stuff with it too. I will probably run KDE 3.5 regardless. It's an older Dell Latitude D630 (very similar to my old 430) so the hardware should be well supported by just about everything by now.

Suggestions?

Well, I've done absolutely none of those things with Linux, but I have been running Ubuntu for the last ~5-years. In fact, I'm posting this on it now, and I use this machine as the main box for our small business.

I really don't have any complaints from a general OS standpoint. I did upgrade to 10.4(?) LTS, and I've been happy with that choice - honestly, the new distro releases every 6-months was a bit of a pita for me.

Other than that, no real complaints. I keep about 12-browser windows open at any given time, with a total of 60-70 tabs on average(yeah I'm a lazy motherberkeleyer sometimes), and it chugs along fine on this Dell Intel Core i5 box.

From what I've seen, Ubuntu seems to be the current favorite go-to desktop distro.

Personally, we use CentOS (RHEL, free) on our machines. You can look and see exactly how long updates/fixes/etc will be available for a specific version. Never the latest versions of anything, but that's perfect for us. Long-lasting and stable.

Back in the good old days, I eeked every last drop of performance out of my PCs by running Gentoo, with everything optimized and compiled for my specific hardware/usage. If you've got lots of time to screw with stuff and enjoy doing it, that's a good option. I don't (anymore).

Mint 12 Debian here... all the good that Ubuntu once was without the Unity crap it has become.

I'm actually warming to Unity after hating it when I first tried it. I played around with a few versions of Mint, including the Cinnamon desktop, but I went back to Ubuntu when the new LTS came out. Unity actually works out pretty well on a netbook, which is my primary Linux usage; I imagine a smaller laptop would also benefit from the layout.

Been running on Ubuntu for years, though I can't warm up to the Unity stuff. Seems very resource-hungry and I just don't like the interface. I know I can go back to the old gnome desktop, but it still runs slower. I'm using 10.04 LTS, but I may jump ship when they cease support for that version.

Mint w/ MATE desktop, it's like Ubuntu if Canonical actually gave a damn what their users thought, you get all the advanced and user-friendly features of Ubuntu without the Apple mimicry, much better selection of default packages.

Ubuntu has definitely jumped the shark. I use whichever distro needs the least modifications to be how I want, and now it's Mint.

I tried Cinnamon desktop, that's good too, in fact I'd probably be using it instead of MATE if it worked with a mouse gesture recognition program I use.

Giant Purple Snorklewacker wrote: Mint 12 Debian here... all the good that Ubuntu once was without the Unity crap it has become.

I hate unity, I switched back to gnome. Although I would like to try out Mint.

You can get rid of Unity and replace it with Gnome or KDE. http://ubuntublog.org/how-to-remove-unity-desktop-in-ubuntu-12-04.htm

Been out of the Linux thing for a while, but I hear a lot about Ubuntu these days.

Been on openSUSE 11.4 and then 12 for several months now. 11.4 runs great on my dual-booted thinkpad w510, and I use 12 for most of my production servers.

I think there is a live cd version of 12.4 to play around w/ on their website.

Put Lubuntu (not regular Ubuntu as I was trying to strip down a resources limited computer) on my wife's old laptop after Windows 7 bogged it down too much. Not much to say about it as I'm not really a serious computer guy, other than that my wife is REALLY not a computer person and doesn't get confused by it very much anymore, and it's way faster than Windows 7.

Yeah Lubuntu's still a favorite of mine for a lightweight OS, overall it's the lightest one that doesn't sacrifice on convenience or functionality at all, it just doesn't have all the eye candy.

Giant Purple Snorklewacker wrote: Mint 12 Debian here... all the good that Ubuntu once was without the Unity crap it has become.

I agree completely.

When Unity was first introduced, there was a defect in the programming that could create a full-screen invisible window that made all mouse selections impossible. That was fun. I assume that problem has been fixed, but it's too late and I don't care.

Mint is a better Ubuntu than Ubuntu. The distros are more stable, responsive, and complete than Ubuntu.

What desktop are you guys running on Mint? I've got Cinnamon going on a live CD right now but I'm not set on it either. I would use KDE but it's bundled with ... ewwwww ... KDE4.

I've been most happy with Ubuntu as a distro for most things.