

Ask HN: Alternative to Ubuntu? - mrpixel

I enjoyed switching from FreeBSD to Ubuntu 8.04 some time ago -- the FreeBSD went into the rack and I could do office work on a nice Gnome desktop environment.<p>Until now.<p>Gnome is broken and unsupported. Keyboard shortcuts don't work anymore. It's frustratingly slow to work with a mouse. I feel so babied around. There's no workflow anymore. I hate it. I so would love to ask them what kind of grass they're smoking... there's just no love anymore.<p>So, what's THE Linux distro developers might want to switch to?
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dkersten
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.

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Wilduck
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/>

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gaius
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/>

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wr1472
I've heard Linux Mint is a good alternative to Ubuntu not tried it personally
though.

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imaginationac
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.

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

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samuellittley
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...

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sheff
I've had the same annoyances/issues when using recent base Ubuntu distros.

I really dislike alterations in user interfaces for what seems to be little
end benefit, so looked around and found Xfce and LXDE which both have Ubuntu
variants.

I've been running Lubuntu for a few weeks now and have been quite happy, and
hopefully it will only change at a glacial pace.

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dkuntz2
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.

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kristianp
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.

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mrlyc
Windows 7 leaves drives powered up too whereas Windows XP didn't. I suspect
the change was made for people who want to keep charging their devices.

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ExpiredLink
XFCE [http://digitizor.com/2011/08/04/linus-torvalds-ditches-
gnome...](http://digitizor.com/2011/08/04/linus-torvalds-ditches-gnome-for-
xfce/)

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mooism2
But which distribution?

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smectos
Xubuntu ?

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aitoehigie
I am running Xubuntu now on my laptop and I can tell you that it comes
recommended for me. Its very light on system resources and extremely fast. I
hate UNITY and not a fan of GNOME 3. Do try it out.

~~~
adito
Me too. It's fast, but not extremely fast actually.

Previously, I use arch linux and love it. But not recomended for beginners.

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

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cryptolect
Give Fedora a shot.

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seclorum
Ubuntu Studio - its Ubuntu without the crap.

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macco
Isn't it Ubuntu for Multimedia Work?

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seclorum
Yes, but its still Ubuntu underneath and can be tuned/tweaked/used for
anything else .. its just go the realtime stuff nailed for media production.

