A little over a year ago, I assembled my first desktop computer all by myself. I've been using computers for a very long time but it was only until that point in my life where I felt the inspiration to try and build one myself. After much reading and YouTube watching, especially the part about inserting the CPU into the motherboard, I bought all the parts and started assembling.
PC Build Components (May 8, 2013)
But this post isn't about that. When I successfully completed that build, I already decided to boot only Linux on the machine. And so I made a running file in Google Drive to log all the Linux distributions I've used since May 8, 2013. (I felt really stupid for not thinking of doing this earlier, when I started using Linux in 2008...but oh, well.)
The List
This post is about my thoughts on the Linux distros I've used in the past year.
I would have to say that I owe a lot to Ubuntu Linux as it was this distro that got me started with Linux back in 2008. And so it was the first distro I installed on my desktop PC a year ago. For 4 months, I distrohopped around with Ubuntu-based distros and always had Ubuntu as a fallback. From the list, you can see that I averaged 63.5 days (or around 2 months) when I used Ubuntu as my main OS. And that's understandable because Ubuntu met my needs perfectly then, and will still probably be a good distro choice today (I haven't tried the Ubuntu 14.04 LTS release yet). If you also notice, I only use the LTS releases. So maybe it's time to give the latest one a spin.
I distrohop a lot; sometimes to a point that I triple-boot my computer with 3 different Linux distributions. My motherboard (ASUS F2 A85-V PRO) is capable of UEFI boot so I experimented with that a lot with the different distros. And sometimes I b0rk the whole system so I have to start from scratch. Ubuntu would always be my fallback but after a fourth re-install from scratch, I got really tired of re-installing the apps that I used. I guess at that point in time, I wanted something that worked "out-of-the-box" i.e. with Adobe Flash and multimedia playback already setup. Being familiar with Ubuntu, Linux Mint was an obvious choice. I chose to go with Linux Mint 13 Maya, which is based on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. And it worked well for my needs. I used it for about a month, and would have used it longer, but a sudden itch just needed to be scratched. And that itch was...
I actually read some stuff about elementary OS before but never got around to give it a try. A lot of the stuff I read most often than not said that it was an "OS X" wannabe of a distro. I checked their site then and saw it was on version "0.2" (Luna) and thought why would I use something below a "1" release? Then I found out that it used Ubuntu 12.04 LTS as the base for the distro and I was intrigued. (You see the pattern on my preference here, right?) So I decided to download the ISO, try it on VirtualBox and liked what I saw that I replaced Linux Mint with it. But since it followed Ubuntu's philosophy of only using free/open-source software, I had to go over some hurdles but I didn't mind. I used the distro for close to 1 month; the only reason I left it was because of the issue about the Workspace behavior. But design wise, hands-down elementary OS would top my list.
I left elementary OS and returned to Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. 2 months later, I decided to dive deeper.
Having relatively new hardware at that time, I was expecting Debian to cause me a lot of hurt. And it did not disappoint! But if you've used Linux for a number of years, you'd probably reached a certain point of masochism. I actually couldn't use the default Debian 7.x kernel (at that time 3.2) because it kept "kernel panicking" on me. Undeterred, I decided to convert from "stable" to "testing" which upgraded the kernel to version 3.11 at that time. That solved a whole lot of my issues with PulseAudio and the kernel panics stopped. At that time, I was also interested in the LXDE desktop environment because I felt it was a no-frills DE which wasn't getting as much love as its cousin, XFCE, was getting. I used it for a month but I would probably have used it until now had I not mucked up my system for reasons I can't recall anymore.
Again, too lazy to build everything from scratch, I tried to look for a Debian-based distro to take its place. And I found...
Now this was a distro I haven't heard of before I decided to use it. Why I used it was probably because it was the only distro I found that was based on Debian (and not Ubuntu) that was based off of "unstable" branch that had documentation about using it with UEFI. It also sported Openbox as its window manager and by default had the Faenza icons (which surprisingly made Openbox look really cool). It was also a rolling-release type of distro so at this point I've dived even deeper into Linux.
After doing a re-install after the first one failed, I decided to stick with it. If you look at the list, I only used it for 1 day because I somehow have a way of messing things up. After installing it twice, I wasn't up to doing it all again. It wasn't hard to install it, mind you, but I suddenly got a shot of inspiration. If I wanted to go rolling-release, then I'd have to go mainstream; I'd have to go with the big "A". I'd have to go with...
I have used Arch way before I built my first desktop PC. And I have always held it in high regard. So I wanted to roll a rolling-release distro. I felt Arch was the way to go. I've already done a Debian from CLI and built it up so that the end result had a GUI. So I was willing to go do it with Arch. And if you follow the great "Beginner's Guide", then 99.9% you'd be set well on your way.
But 14 days was all it took for my fickle mind to come to a decision to try something else. At that point in time, my interest in Gnome 3 was growing. I did install it into the Arch system it worked fine. But I read somewhere on the Internet that KDE is to OpenSUSE while Gnome is to...
And so, after a long, long time of not touching anything that had yum-related, I decided to go with Fedora 20. And there really wasn't any reason not to. I've read a fair amount of reviews that it was a very good Fedora release; the best there's been in years. I don't know what shunned me from using Fedora in the past, but Fedora 20 was surprisingly a very nice desktop distro. It was the only distro, aside from Ubuntu, that I've used longer than 32 days (approx. a month). Perhaps because it was "bleeding edge" and I liked that I kept getting kernel updates every 2 weeks which I wasn't used to get in Ubuntu 12.04 LTS.
I can't recall if I broke it or my fickle mind started up again but it was a really fun distro to use, until I decided to go back to Arch Linux again, via...
I had a choice between Antergos and Manjaro, both great distros based off of Arch Linux. The deciding factor was that Antergos came with Gnome 3 as default, while Manjaro came with XFCE (with Gnome 3 was only a "Community Edition"). I also preferred Antergos because it didn't have too much tweaks to vanilla Arch Linux. And, if you look at the list, this is by far the longest running distro I've used in my entire Linux-using life. 86 days (and counting) says a lot about Antergos (and Arch Linux). I think I've finally found my preferred distro. I don't know if I will ever be as comfortable with Debian- and Ubuntu-based distros. The AUR is such a wonderful aspect of Arch that I probably cannot let go of.
But I do have a fickle mind with regard to Linux. And the latest LTS release from Ubuntu has arrived and is tempting me once again to consider trying it out. There are also new distros coming out which are interesting to try out as well. But such is the beauty of Linux: freedom and choice! Perhaps I will roost a little longer with Antergos but who knows, maybe tomorrow I wake up thinking "It's a good day to hop onto another distro!"
Thanks for reading, and as always, happy Linux-ing!
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