Voice of the Masses: What’s your dream distro?
Imagine you could gather together the best bits of every Linux distribution, and create your numero-uno, top notch, bee’s knees distro to rule the world. What would it look like? For instance, you may want a rolling-release apt-get based distro built around Gnome 3 with various extensions installed and YaST for system configuration.
Or perhaps you want a rock-solid LTS distro using Yum with a KDE front-end and certain applications installed by default. Or maybe you’ve already found your perfect distro! Let us know your musings for our next podcast in the comments below – we’ll be recording later in the week.
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About The Author
Mike Saunders
Mike stores his data by printing out hex dumps and laminating the sheets. He's the author of The Haynes Linux Manual and the creator of MikeOS, an operating system hand-built from assembly language.
Hello LV,
for a long time my favorite distro has been crunchbang. I love the rock solid Debian with the clean and fast open box gui. After the end of crunchbang I decided to switch to Debian Jessie with an i3 desktop: Very fast, extremely keyboard friendly and easy to handle. Only for certain tasks, eg configuring new wifi, I like to switch to xfce.
Whisper it quietly, but I quite like the Ubuntu side bar. Would like to have that display option in Cinnamon. Otherwise, Mint is already the bees knees (although that default wallpaper needs a redesign), and the idea to move to an LTS-based support cycle was sound.
LMDE (Linux Mint Debian Edition) for speed, combined with the ease of use of conventional Linux Mint, and the good looks of Elementary OS. Important also to include Elementary’s columns view in the file manager.
Sometimes I’m in an Arch mood and I want to experiment and learn new things about Linux and how it works; sometimes I’m in an Ubuntu mood and I just want to get things done without a fuss.
Not that the two things a mutually exclusive, of course, but I tend to go to different distros to do different things because it’s a bit much to ask one distro to be user-friendly and be bleeding-edge-bare-bones-get-under-the-hood-and-mess-about.
It’s all about freedom and choice you know.
For me it would be somewhere in between Debian, Ubuntu and Arch. I’m currently using Ubuntu but it does take a little bit of persuasion to get it closer to how I like it – Gnome Shell helps a lot.
For servers, Debian fits 99.9% of stuff I need it for and I cant fault it.
For my desktop, I would love something with Debian’s stability, Ubuntu’s “desktop friendlyness” and PPA-type software repositories and Arch’s rolling release cycle and up to date packages. Although, often stability and new packages don’t walk hand in hand so perhaps not quite as bleeding edge.
I did try LMDE for a while but it just didn’t sit right.
Steve – Perhaps look at Void Linux. It just might provide what you’re looking for.
It is a hard question.
Being a distrohopper, who have a hard time settling down to one distro, my perfect distro would every 2 month change into a new distro/desktop.
Surprise me.
So for example January and February it would be KDE, Marts and April it would be XFCE, May and June it could be Unity and so forth, choosing distros from Distrowatch top 100.
Each time the distro would change, a folder should appears with relevant documentation and links to forums.
But there has to be a section of the system that is not changing. Just to keep the wife happy……
Dream Distro or Nightmare?
I think of my distro the same way I view my garden shed or workshop. It’s the place where my tools live! As it happens my workshop tools our on display (fixed to the walls) so I can quickly find the tool I want to use. I liken this to the menu system I get with using Mate.
I prefer LTS distros so I don’t have to “rebuild and restock my workshop”, that often. I’ve not tried a rolling release distro but may be that’s the answer. It would be nice when having to install a new distro that I could just give a list of tools I want (with the list being generated by my current setup, a job for the software centre). Also it would be nice if my data was just left as is without having to re-install it after a distro installation (I had thought that having a separate partition for “/home” would do just that for me, but I’m concerned that old application configuration files just might screw things up, hence ending up just coping my data from my last backup).
I do think too much effort is put into “the distro” whilst I am normally more concerned over what tools I have to use and how easy are they to user and that they still work on a new or different distro.
I agree with this 100%.
I use xubuntu LTS, but it’s not so important really, it’s just a ‘path of least resistance’ stepping stone to my preferred setup, which is much more about the installed software and configuration than the distro. And I suspect that if a distro came out with my preferred software / config combination as a default, I’d still tinker.
To be honest, the last time I switched distros (from ubuntu to xubuntu) was to avoid a specific piece of software being installed by default (unity). The next time I switch distros will likely be for the same reason (cough…systemd…cough).
(note: having a separate /home partition works a charm, I even managed to keep all my settings migrating to a 64-bit platform)
I already have it in the form of Mint but, having an older computer I wish some of the delays (of something to happen) could be engineered out of the MATE desktop. Seven years ago this would have been a top flight computer however today you need to wait for things to progress.
My absolute dream would be something with the stability of Debian with the package manager from Arch including AUR support.
The DE should be lightweight and fast as OpenBox while still looking great and have all the little comfort features of a DE like Gnome 3.
In addition it would be cool to have an optional tiling functionality for when I’m using the laptop.
The latest packages, in a rock solid distribution, with easy (no breakage) installation. Yes I know I am dreaming.
KXStudio , but rolling release model, like Arch. Everything setup for realtime, latest stable version directly from devs (Carla, MOD), and alsa+jack+pulse combined with Cadence, so i can take any sound from any source.
I’m pretty happy with Mint Cinnamon, but to get my dream OS it would have to be something like an edition of openSUSE with the last of the KDE3.x desktops, but all the background stuff updated to work with recent hardware.
I would want a Distro with the Looks of Elementary OS. The latest Kernel. The Package manager of Archlinux with ease of use for installing everything. The small but immportant audio over 100% check in the audio settings, so my keyboard can go to 150% audio volume.
The easy additional driver installation of ubuntu for the graphics card. So it just works. No typing and frikeling around.
Yeah that would be it.
I forgot. Rolling release to get the latest and greatest software.
Linux is so versatile and tweakable that I don’t dream about someone creating the perfect distro for me – I dream about knowing and understanding Linux so much that I can create anything I want.
My idea! In my opinion distro’s should be more open how they where created or what they changed. For example You can install arch and you can pick all the best parts of another distro and implement them. They should also package them. For example a manjaro tweaks should be just a pacman -S away on arch.
A stable Arch Linux with a non broken Cinnamon
Well it depends. If I’m running late a granola-topped yoghurt will do, but if time is on my side I’ll happily download a big bowl of fruit and nut muesli…keeps me going for hours, that does.
Whenever I dream of a distro (no, it is not THAT often), it seems to be able to read my thoughts and can give me unparalleled control of the universe through a simple sudo command on my neurally connected terminal, but I am unable to remember my password. I usually wake up just as I get password right.
All distros are the same, bar their configuration tools. Every distro potentially can install and run every application and every desktop environment. Some are marginally faster, some have periodic updates others have rolling releases…these matter not. The principal differentiators are the tools that allow you to set up any individual’s “dream distro” the way he or she wants it. So my dream distro would have a single, universal, easy, GUI configurator for every application, environment, and device.
Bootable EMACS – Standalone…. wuhuuuuuu
if this is not working, I would love to have an
LFS-like distro in form of an audiopod-cast or a youtube channel
My dream distro was Ubuntu 10.04. It was an LTS which was well supported and stable on my hardware, using GNOME 2 and with Ubuntu One to let me sync *any* of my files with a cloud server, rather than having to keep them in (or symlink them to) a special syncing folder.
I tried Unity and GNOME 3, but they both wanted to enforce someone else’s idea of a workflow on me, rather than adapt to mine, so I moved to Linux Mint MATE – but I do miss the simplicity of syncing/backup that Ubuntu One provided.
Ahem… http://peppertop.com/elvie/comic/elvie-007/
The perfect distro is one that, having been tweaked over months to your perfect working/playing environment, doesn’t disintegrate with the next upgrade. Distros are moving targets, rarely the same one year to the next, and each upgrade wrecks as many things as it fixes…and even rolling releases merely spread the destruction over time rather than pile it on at one big hit.
I’m pretty easy. I want one that will install and work on my laptop without major hassle, that doesn’t get in my way when I want to do things, will allow me to update without me having to do everything from scratch. Oh and where OpenShot and DigiKam don’t randomly crash every five seconds…
The latter is especially important given how often it’s happening to me at the moment with Linux Mint…
In tomorrow’s cloud centric world distros only need to be able run a modern browser; everything else is for those cursed with no internet. Connectivity is probably the most important household utility well ahead of electricity, gas, running water or sewage. We can do without the rest as long as we can update our facebook status using our solar powered laptops, sipping recycled urine, and cooking on the flames fuelled by old LV magazines…thanks for the extra pages folks!
I’d sort of agree, just that for a larger number of ppl, there may not be (easy access to) internet. Either at all, or only imited – it’s not an entirely equivalent world. Though I would like it to be so.
cheer
Hmmm… it turns out that if you fail to get the CAPTCHA right and have a second go, your reply is posted to the end of the thread, rather than inline.
Huw, I did reply to your comment, but it’s now much further down the page, entirely without context, and with no way to edit or delete it.
Just have to say that all I really want in a distro is that it will work reasonably well and not give too many errors.
I don’t want to pick out any distro in particular, since a lot of them do it but graphics interoperation is still somewhat of an issue as far as I have found. Essentially we all wind up mixing and mashing various capacities anyway, thats perhaps requisite libs and stuff, but conflicting libs are still tricky to isolate and redundancy is implicit these days anyway.
Wish HD space was still restricted, that way they’d consolidate libs and get over the extra bulge.
From one obese HD to another, there’s too much extra baggae.
Eh?Don’t you reckon, you could easily leave that out and still get done what youneed.
argh
One that works and works well that is all.
I’d like to use a distribution like Gentoo but without all that proprietary crap software. It seems my dream is already being implemented. It is called Firefly GNU+Linux.
LMAE – Linux Mint Arch Edition. Arch is soooo good when it’s working and Mint always works. Mint also knows that I don’t care for the command line and I’m easily confused. Give me lots of configuration options, but please put them in a nice GUI. Playing with Antergos with Cinnamon on top right now. It’s close, but not quite there.
I have found openSUSE Tumbleweed to be a nice blend of rolling-release fun and minimal-to-no breakage. I have two machines with Tumbleweed and XFCE. Sometimes it gets newer packages than my Arch box does, yet it is somehow just as polished and stable as my openSUSE 13.2 machine.
It’s a fair cop, guv! But as I said in the forums, “I don’t tend to distro hop so much now, but there was definitely a time when it was me, too”.
I guess I stopped distro hopping so much when I found one I was really comfortable with. Since then I’ve only really switched in an effort to get back to where I was in 2010 😉
My distro hopping ended with Arch. I wouldn’t run it on a server, but as my desktop there is very little to complain about. I get the latest software, I have access to all of it in the repos and aur, and, despite other comments, it’s stable. Everything else broke a long time ago but Arch keeps going and going. When I get tempted to install another distro I think “why?” If there’s some interesting configuration idea I just steal it, and if there’s some desktop or theme, like budgie or lumina or lxqt or evopop, I just install it and I’ve hopped without having to hop. And I get the latest and greatest and I never have to release upgrade and risk breaking everything irreparably.
Improvements? For me most of the improvements would be in the GnuLinux ecosystem. Arch seems like a mostly transparent or pure way to run it.
Linux From Scratch. Make our own choices.
Secure Nano Server with support for rot13fs or enhanced 2ROT13fs
My favourite is LinuxBBQ uses apt-get – stripped back simplicity and lots of humour.
http://linuxbbq.org/bbs/index.php
I’m very happy with a modern XFCE based distro like Linux Mint or Xubuntu. LXDE is a close second, but its panel functionality isn’t quite there. For me, panels are superior for launching ‘most favorite’ apps and documents (directory link) and the whisker menu is best for ‘secondary favorites’).
I’ve just tried the latest Cinnamon and MATE and am disappointed, they don’t yet have a panel ‘editor’ to find missing separators and spacers (for instance) needed for grouping icons (if it can even be done).
Definitely can’t fit my work flow into gnome-shell or Unity any time soon.
While OS is completely FOSS I’m fine with it. Everything else doesn’t really matter cause every distro is customizable. For now I’m using Trisquel and I don’t need anything else.
http://nixos.org
Only many things aren’t as polished as in the biggest distros (yet).
For about half a year now I have been using arch. I have seen many distros in the short time I’ve been a linux user. Arch is by far the best. I love pacman, I have it set up to go straight to CLi and then I can do all that I really want to do.
Ultimately I would want to go to CLi first, do code or whatever and if I need to startx or use wayland I will.
Solus should be my favourite.