Voice of the Masses: What would be in your ideal distro?
As it’s near the start of the year, we thought we’d ask this classic: What would be in your ideal distro?
Let us know your thoughts in the comments on desktop environments, package management, proprietary codecs/drivers, user packages, audio subsystems or anything else that’s important to you – even if you’ve found your perfect distro.
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linuxvoice
23 Comments
an apt based one
but has music-livecoding app “tidalcycles” pre-set-up
A strange and unnatural hybrid between a rolling release and a release-based distro I think.
A base of stable, tested packages. All versions of all drivers are available for any kernel instantly and you don’t have to build it yourself. You test it and if it doesn’t work the computer asks you nicely if you want to go back to standard configuration. Also, rivers flow with honey, milk and flatpaks.
Oh and it would have to use pacman because a) it gathers all package related things I want to do in one tool and b) I can still remember those commands years after I have stopped using it, unlike any of the others.
So… Arch. But stable and without the headaches.
Have you tried Manjaro?
fedora with automatic upgrading after the 6-month cycle
a micro distro with console apps only. for distraction free work. should run nippy on a rasp pi. 🙂 but still support wifi, raid and have software ready for web, ereading, mp3s. irc, rss, office, email…
put away that mouse and learn to use keyboard 100% of the time for speed
It would be really cool. But we won’t be able to navigate 80% of the web, open 98% of documents (PDF, Word, PNG, …). But I really like the idea 🙂
I’d like to see Veracrypt come bundled as standard. It seems an odd omission given our need for security. There’s probably a reason why it’s not included in the major distros but, if so, I don’t know what it is!
I’m very satisfied of Manjaro:
– it have almost all desktop enviroments, especially Cinnamon and Mate
– it’s rolling but packages are “buffered” from Arch
– large software collection; including the AUR (Arch User Repository)
– it’s easy to make a package for a missing program, goodbye dirty make && make install (valid for all Arch based)
– it’s easy to make your spin/remix of the OS
For me are important rolling release model, custom packages and ISO spinning
I don’t know if it’s me or distros that have gotten boring, but I find the differences between distros don’t offer any big advantages these days unless it’s something very focused like kxstudio. Otherwise I will generally install Unity or Budgie on any distro that detects all my hardware and sway towards .deb over .rpm due to a preference when I compared them around ten years ago.
The main gripes I’d like to have magiced away would be stability of apps I depend on (LibreOffice and KDEnlive) and performance but most distros are the same. For example, even on the lightweight ones don’t give improvement on relatively powerful hardware.
Oh all the usual stuff, but ideally it would boot so fast that I wouldn’t even have time to think the word “tea”, let alone put the kettle on.
I have simple needs. I just want a distro that works and that doesn’t screw up when I upgrade. I recently upgraded from Kubuntu 16.04 to 16.10 and have now been left unable to get in as the keyboard and trackpad aren’t recognised. They worked before, they work in the live distro. Yet installed, I’m locked out. How on earth does this even happen?
Simply a distro that works and doesn’t get in my way when I’m working.
I would like to see an installer that could install anything. I would like it to be able to install programmes from other OS’s without breaking electric. I would like it to be able to tell when to install over an old program or install separately in a new namespace. I would like it to do this without filling up my hard drive. I would also like it to be more flexable than me with midnight commander and a list of instructions that I have gleaned from the web.
A distribution with the stability of Debian,
with the speed of development of Arch or Solus,
That was maintained by a co-operative organization in which members paid a yearly membership fee to elect the board of directors (to ensure stability, security audits, user-focus, decisions on which apps to support, and funding for development),
Who’s DE was as visually appealing as Budgie, but as light as LXQT,
That had really good driver support. And a universal software store that used Flatpak or Snappy.
Oh al also was QT based for convergence and also had Discourse or NodeBB and Rocket.Chat based communities.
An OS that looks nice on install. Is quick to respond. Has a well laid out menu to find software and gets out of my way. So far Solus is the closest.
Any distro where the battery on my laptop lasts as long as it does running Windows.
Oh, and that isn’t trolling! 🙂 I use Linux all the time on my laptop but dual-boot into Windows when I have to (some applications still don’t have Linux versions) and the battery life is noticeably better. Still, the UI is worse so maybe that is a reasonable trade-off? Still… be nice to have a Linux laptop last all day wouldn’t it? 🙂
I have quite an old laptop battery, and it feels like it lasts about the same in windows as in Linux, it’s just Linux is honest about how long it will last
Anything without systemd and without PulseAudio.
Ideal distro would for me
* be based on something predictably popular for the next few years, so I can easily find directly relevant information… and recommend it to others who may be new to the space.
* have a Live distro version that can boot to a command line fast so I can run diagnostics safely, do partitioning, get wireless, etc. This mainly due to all the friends coming to me for repairs…
* come with LibreOffice out of the box – I don’t know why projects still ship with Abiword and Gnumeric… lightweight yes, but also terrible ODF implementations!
So far I have found Ubuntu MATE for most general use cases, and am exploring the arch-anywhere ISO for the cmd line diagnostics tool….
Basically Solus with a bigger, better repo. And upgrades to the package manager.
I realize it is a bit late but just hear the podcast and thought I’d respond, Because I haven’t seen anyone mention this. My Ideal Disto would include the option to securely wipe the disk as part of the install,as well as some preset options for SSD’s. both are common use cases for Linux users.