
10 Linux distros to watch in 2014 - MisterLunduke
http://www.networkworld.com/slideshow/131913/10-linux-distros-to-watch-in-2014.html
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stewbrew
Names of some distros. Short descriptions. Some image. No orginal content.
Some remarks but no reasoning about why a distro was included in the list.
Little surplus value in comparison to the top 10 distros of
[http://distrowatch.com](http://distrowatch.com).

~~~
tenfingers
The best distributions are the distributions which have a large developer
base, good tools (bug trackers, QA, etc), are desktop agnostic, and have been
alive for several years.

The list much has been pretty much the same for more than a decade now:
openSuse, fedora, debian, arch, gentoo.

Everything else is derivative, where the "added value" is often a default
theme and a list of default applications.

~~~
sp332
Debian isn't necessarily better than Linux Mint just because Mint is a
"derivative". The reason all these derivatives exist is to focus on a goal the
original distro didn't, like a specific desktop.

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VLM
Its been interesting to watch journalist distro reviews over the decades.

In the olden days it was all about the install. The difference between a good
or bad distro was did the installer have a graphical image on boot, or text
mode. No journalist commentary on OS features or actual usage, the sole
quality of an entire OS was just the installer. According to the journalists
no one ever does anything with linux that install it over and over while
admiring the installer.

Now its all about the window manager, with a small side dish of large
corporation gossip. Nothing is ever heard anymore about the beauty of the
installer. Something that remains the same is no one ever discusses the OS
underneath the window manager. According to the journalists no one actually
does anything with linux other than admire weird and counterintuitive desktop
managers while occasionally gossiping about how this mega corporation likes
alpha blending but that corporation likes multitouch, often without the
journalist knowing what it even means.

No one ever talks about the professionals who mostly look at how quickly are
security issues patched and pushed, whats the upgrade experience look like,
how big is the mirror network, how many devs are working on the OS (as a proxy
for how many people could we hire...) and most importantly licensing
constraints. I admit I was pretty unprofessional in 1996 when I switched
everything to Debian just so I could hand a copy of the DFSG to the software
license audit goons and tell them to go away, and like a magic incantation,
they surprisingly did, and its worked like a magic scroll of protection for me
ever since. Here's a copy of my sources.list (now a days a puppet recipe)
showing none of the servers I have control over run anything other than main,
here's the DFSG, heres a print out of the GPL and BSD and a bunch of other
DFSG licenses, and my signature, now go away. Costs the linux admins like 10
minutes annually and $0 while the windows admins end up spending weeks and six
figures each time.

~~~
Aardwolf
>> Now its all about the window manager

Imho, now it's all about creating as many tiny pages as possible to show as
much ads as possible for a tiny article (referring to the "slideshow" that the
article is).

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TallGuyShort
Of course for anyone working server-side, Ubuntu 14.04 (the next LTS) and RHEL
7 are going to be the biggest deal of all, I think. I don't see the value in
much of this commentary, but I agree the some of the "X server wars" may
influence popularity. I switched to openSuSE recently for very related reasons
and was happy with the choice - so that prediction may have stock...

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AlexanderDhoore
I used to follow linux distros very closely. I tried out new releases all the
time, and spent hours (days, weeks) tweaking desktop environments.

Now I just use Ubuntu with Unity and Get Stuff Done. I look forward to Ubuntu
14.04. It better be rock solid.

~~~
rdtsc
Same thing with me. Maybe I just got older. Or maybe the novelty wore off.

I remember that time fondly. Mandrake Linux, Redhat, Ubuntu wasn't even in
sight. Compiling everything in Gentoo. Compiled my own kernels often. Hunted
for drivers just to make audio work.

I think I enjoyed it because it was a breath of fresh air after being hit in
the head by Microsoft repeatedly. I don't dislike Microsoft anymore as much
but that is because I have gotten away from using its products (mostly). But
at that time, it felt really exciting getting a Linux prompt on a home PC when
commercial Unix clones would sell for thousands of dollars. It was like having
your own Shuttle in the backyard to play with.

Now it just became a nuisance. I want my stuff to work. "Do I have to open the
terminal again to configure the network? Argh...". Maybe that is a good sign,
Ubuntu got me spoiled. Or again, maybe I just got older and lost interest.

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snird
I think what will cause most damage to the ubuntu popularity is the new Unity
integration with advertisers, I for one, start using Mint instead, getting the
ubuntu environment I'm used to without all the bullshit.

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nimbs
The list:

elementary OS

Ubuntu Touch

openSUSE

ChromeOS

Lubuntu

Mer + Plasma Active

Mint

Arch

SteamOS

Roll Your Own - At this point, the tools for building your own Linux
distribution are mature and easy.

~~~
tenfingers
And by "roll your own" they actually mean "customize distribution X by
choosing the list of packages you want".

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lcedp
Nor amazed with the list... Include
[http://bedrocklinux.org/](http://bedrocklinux.org/) at least.

~~~
matbee
Also voted most fucking ugly.

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mistercow
I stopped reading this at the Arch entry. It makes the list based on a
"hunch", with no elaboration or even speculation? Why should I care about this
author's hunch?

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username42
I think 2014 is the year for fedora. It is the best solution I see to avoid
the insane unity and to have a reliable, modern mainstream distribution.

~~~
ralphc
What's been a dealbreaker for me is Fedora's behavior as a VM client, both
with VirtualBox and VMWare. Sound never works, screen resolution can't be
resized, and video just goes away sometimes. It really helps that Ubuntu has
VMWare client libs right in the repository.

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matbee
Elementary OS is the best. Problem is, it's buggy and would freeze on me
atleast 3x a day.

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user1239321421
Would somebody please write a random "X Y of Z" generator already?

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kfk
Can somebody please tell me what elementary OS is based on? Ubuntu?

~~~
sp332
Yeah, it's Ubuntu. [http://elementaryos.org/answers/will-elementary-os-
continue-...](http://elementaryos.org/answers/will-elementary-os-continue-to-
be-based-on-ubuntu-1)

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timmillwood
Use elementary OS everyday, and love it.

