What's the best alternative to Ubuntu

[Felch]

I installed Ubuntu 14.04.1 on my desktop in the hopes that I could familiarize myself with linux and be a better more well rounded person, yadda yadda yadda.

What I found was a piece of **** OS that makes me feel like I'm using a goddamn ****ing Mac.

Why can't I be a superuser? I built the computer with my own two hands out of spare parts and dried jizz. My operating system should trust me to be its lord and master.

Why doesn't REISUB work by default? Apparently some ****-gobbler decided that it was a security issue. I'm not running a multinational bank, I'm just trying to reboot my system when it freezes every half hour. Instead I had to go into /etc/sysctl.d/10-magic-sysrq.conf and edit it. Except that's not how it worked. I had to sudo into it, then even after I saved it it didn't work, and so I had to go and type in some "service procps start" command but all that gave me was "procps stop/waiting" which doesn't mean **** to me and I still don't know what the ****ing problem is. **** **** ****.

Speaking of REISUB, why does it freeze every half hour? Aren't the LST releases supposed to be stable?

Why does the ubuntu community help suck so much ****? I search it for answers and the answers seem to be "report the bug."

Why does it default to ****ing Firefox? Who the **** uses Firefox? Does linux exist in some temporal anomaly that reaches back a decade for its web browsers? Why is it that when I tell it to use Chromium as my default it ****ing ignores me?

Bottom line, I'm unhappy. I don't like the feeling that I'm using an OSX clone. I don't like the stability issues. Is there a distro that isn't meant for the retards who walked into the Apple Store and bought the shiniest thing there? Is there one that lets me use the internet without freezing every 20-30 minutes?

I hate the Apple mentality that seemed to go into this distro.

[N35t0r]

Windows.

[Sava]

I don't use Ubuntu regularly, but had no problems with the installation SO OBVIOUSLY IT'S RETARD ERROR. Quick, easy, FREE!

I just want a bare-bones OS that runs games.

[Sava]

Who the **** uses Firefox?

20% of the market
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_s...f_web_browsers


and people who like superior web browsers

chrome is for nubs
IE is for tards

everything else is for idiots who like using obscure browsers

[Aeson]

Apolyton runs on Ubuntu. I dont have any experience with it outside web hosting. So far there has only been about 2 minutes of downtime this year, and that was due to me running an absurd database query. (the more recent problems were issues with the host internet connection.

[snoopy369]

You can't be superuser because Ubuntu doesn't consider you to be worthy of the title. Become a better person, and it will consider letting you pick your default web browser. Until then, you're going to have to listen to what it tells you to listen to. If Ubuntu wants you to listen to Brittany Spears, you listen to Brittany Spears and like it.

[Felch]

I switched over to Mint, and I'm not certain just yet if it's better, but it seems more stable and the min/max/close buttons are at the top right of the window, where The Good Lord intended.

[N35t0r]

Cinammon or MATE?

[Felch]

Cinnamon

[Sava]

these OS names are getting dumber and dumber

[N35t0r]

Technically, they're GUIs

[Geronimo]

How practical would this be in combination with Wine be to run all those old 16 bit windows 95 games that I can't make run in 64 bit windows 7? The list of games that are reported to run well in Wine seems to include almost everything that isn't so new it would run great in windows 7 anyway. Will a 64-bit Linux running Wine have the same 16 bit incompatibility that 64 bit windows 7 suffers from?

[Geronimo]

As a new user of linux, by far the biggest headache for me is the extreme balkanization of the channels for support. It's divided not just by version evolution (as any OS would be) but by a zillion distro's and forks that don't even upgrade in sync.

These contrary sources of advice made it difficult to even install the thing at first as the installer modified my system boot such that even though my linux install was on a separate HD from my windows install, the bios had to be made to install from the windows HD in order for the linux booter to allow for the linux install to be booted. Because of this odd fact, for a long while I was convinced that the install had to be broken because it was hang at "verifying dms pool..." forever, when all I had to do to run linux was change the boot order so it would try instead to boot from the windows HD.

Conflicting advice from differing sources implied I would need a separate OS partitian to avoid having to wipe all linux partition data when the updating the OS. Immediately this caused huge headaches when it was clear that I could not make use of the non-OS .ext4 partition until I could research how to "take ownership" of the partition using obscure seeming terminal commands. Much worse, this led to me reinstalling almost immediately when it was clear that not only did installing anything whatsoever to anyplace other than the OS partition would require using the terminal. I also found sources saying .debs were incompatible with mint and no sources saying .rpms were incompatible with mint when in fact for my version of mint .debs would work but .rpms wouldn't.

With Wine, I discovered that essentially everything ever written anywhere about it was out of date and needn't have wasted tons of time with various installation tweaks which actually broke the install. In fact, one of the pieces of advice on the wine site itself led to somehow ruining my program source record so that, once again I had to reinstall as there was no obvious way to make the updater or installer work again even after reversing the changes.

So which is the best version of Linux? The one with the most up to date documentation I'm sure..whichever one that is.

[Urban Ranger]

As a new user of linux, by far the biggest headache for me is the extreme balkanization of the channels for support. It's divided not just by version evolution (as any OS would be) but by a zillion distro's and forks that don't even upgrade in sync.

That's generally not a problem. As you may know Linux distros are big things that have many parts. Each part has its own developers and support channel. So depending on which part (say Genone) you need support you go to those channels.

These contrary sources of advice made it difficult to even install the thing at first as the installer modified my system boot such that even though my linux install was on a separate HD from my windows install, the bios had to be made to install from the windows HD in order for the linux booter to allow for the linux install to be booted. Because of this odd fact, for a long while I was convinced that the install had to be broken because it was hang at "verifying dms pool..." forever, when all I had to do to run linux was change the boot order so it would try instead to boot from the windows HD.

If you want to have a dual boot system, install Windows first and Linux second, and you need to boot from the Windows HD.

Conflicting advice from differing sources implied I would need a separate OS partitian to avoid having to wipe all linux partition data when the updating the OS. Immediately this caused huge headaches when it was clear that I could not make use of the non-OS .ext4 partition until I could research how to "take ownership" of the partition using obscure seeming terminal commands. Much worse, this led to me reinstalling almost immediately when it was clear that not only did installing anything whatsoever to anyplace other than the OS partition would require using the terminal. I also found sources saying .debs were incompatible with mint and no sources saying .rpms were incompatible with mint when in fact for my version of mint .debs would work but .rpms wouldn't.

Generally its not a good idea to try to install packages from outside of your distro unless you know what you are doing. If you want something not in your distro, the best thing to do is to download the source and compile it. This would avoid a lot of headaches.

As for having partitions, yes, it is a good idea to keep your OS separate from your own data. I generally use a three partition scheme: /, /boot and swap. The OS goes into /boot. Everything else goes into /, including /var and /usr.

So which is the best version of Linux? The one with the most up to date documentation I'm sure..whichever one that is.

I don't have much experience with Wine. The main reason I use Linux is to get away from Windows... I seem to recall a database of Windows programs at the Wine website that tells you what to do to run them.

At any rate, there isn't a best version of Linux per se. It depends on what you want to do. Personally I am not a big fan of Ubuntu or any of the offshoots. Don't use Fedora if all you want is a stable environment, try CentOS or debian.

Check distrowatch.com for more info on various distros.

Have fun!

[Urban Ranger]

Technically, they're GUIs

Not quite.

Each distro has its own tweaks and target group(s). For example, some are tailored for users of old computers.