I don't really post to message boards much, but this post caught my eye. Some recommendations: (all use ubuntu as a base but with different gui).

- Linux Mint - lots of people that hate Unity have moved to Mint. Now the #1 distro on distrowatch.
- Xubuntu - lightweight desktop
- Lubuntu - even lighter desktop - even works well on PCs with 512mb ram etc.

Rob

It is the Everest. It is the epitome of Linux. Just if you know how to use it. Arch users for 4 years and thinking never go other Linux. It has the best Wiki by the way.

Try Linux Mint or pure Debian (it's not as scary as it used to be). I know a lot of people like Arch for technical reasons but the prima donna crap flying around when folks suggested package signing was important made me decide I don't need to deal with that community. On the upside of Debian or Mint you end up with skills that transfer to any Debian based distro out there which is a lot of them.

And if you must use Ubuntu, avoid anything but the LTS (long term support) versions, they do a marginally better job on these (though sometimes cram stuff in that's not ready since they have to support it for longer).

When you mention Mint above were you referring to the Debian flavor of Mint? If you feel I'd be better off with that, some info as to why would be appreciated. I could give that a spin also.

I've spent more time on this today and tried live CDs of Mint with KDE and openSUSE. I really don't care for what they've done with KDE personally but that's a purely subjective thing. I wouldn't want to argue that I think this or that is wrong with it. It could be if I spent more time with it and got to know it better that it would grow on me.

So currently I am downloading the standard edition of Linux Mint with Gnome 3.2 after looking that over on the site. After my KDE experience, Gnome looks better to me and the new version seems like it might be nice but I'll have to play with it to see what I think. In any case for me personally, Gnome's simplicity is a good thing. I find it more intuitive to use than what I just experienced with KDE.

Apparently I am going to have to man up and stop being a "twit" as someone called me, by moving the laptop to my other desk and plugging it in for Internet access to get the broadcom driver. So this is next. I'll give this live cd a run and come back here after.

I do appreciate the feedback very much guys. Thank you.

No, I meant the base version, which is Ubuntu with sane defaults. However the Debian flavor is likely good as well, and there's nothing wrong with having access to the base Debian upstream repos instead of the downstream Ubuntu Universe repos. 3rd party repos usually offer both Debian and Ubuntu versions so either choice is fine.

I favor Debian, especially server side, but I usually use Ubuntu LTS on my work desktop because I need to futz with stuff less on my work desktop and am more willing to live with distro defaults (and Ubuntu 10.04 was a bit more configured out of the box at the time).

EDIT: Because I made no sense.

Most recently, I've been using Ubuntu Studio and openSUSE KDE, and all I can say (like the OP) is wow.

There is just so much great (GNU license and monetarily) free software in the Linux world that it makes my nerd loins quiver. It's like it's the world's best kept secret...

I read only this part.

I happened to install Ubuntu 11.10/Unity yesterday, in VMWare Player. I just wanted to see what everyone is complaining about.

The installation itself was a breeze, which it has usually been for me for different Linux distributions in the past, also outside VMWare. Not harder than installing e.g. WinXP or Win7 from CD.

But I didn't get the Unity user interface either. As I said elsewhere, I installed two (Linux) games on it, but the problem for me was to find where do I start those installed games/apps. I'm sure I was missing something obvious, but I couldn't be arsed to toy around anymore, after all I was just experimenting a bit (and getting tired, it was already 1am at that point). Maybe I should replace Ubuntu with Mint or CentOS, then.

And yes, I was similarly lost also on Win8 Metro UI I also tried yesterday. It seems you just (once again) have to throw out pretty much everything you already know, and re-learn the new Ubuntu or Windows. Of course it could also affect it that I am also getting accustomed to Android user interfaces, so I was feverishly trying to find a "back" or "home" icon or button in e.g. Metro. Exactly! As I said elsewhere, it is basically (AFAIK) the beta version of the future Red Hat Enterprise Linux release, and the release cycle is quite short, so you'd have to update to the next Fedora release quite often. No LTS versions there.

Using Fedora is a bit like using Windows 8 beta preview, IMHO.

That said, I liked how Fedora did feel quite "professional" compared to e.g. Ubuntu, but it may also be I am just more familiar with the Red Hat family due to my work. In any case, I'd propose CentOS instead of Fedora, if Red Hat is your thing.

The Unity UI is excellent for netbooks, since it's using screen space very efficiently (Windows 7-ish left bar, merging window header with taskbar etc.) After all, it was included only in the netbook release of Ubuntu when that was availible as far as I can tell, and it actually does the job very well. Why would anyone want to use it on a desktop computer or a regular notebook is beyond me thou, advantages are kind of meaningless on those and the whole thing gets confusing if you want to do ... well, work on it.

Right. For example switching between workspaces seemed oddly cumbersome compared to what I'm used to in Gnome etc., at least when using just the mouse. But, I don't have that much experience with Unity yet, it is still there in VMWave Player...

Ps. Is "Unity" in any way related to Gnome 3, or Gnome in general? I just seem to remember Linus Torvalds bitching about Gnome 3 in the past, and now it is unclear to me whether his criticism was directed to Unity (as well)?

http://linux.slashdot.org/story/11/08/04/0115232/linus-torvalds-ditches-gnome-3-for-xfce

Off-topic, just to add some "Windows hate" to a Linux discussion.

My Windows 7 (work) laptop seems to crash completely every now and then. Out of a blue, even when I am barely touching the laptop and running just basic IE and some office stuff on it, I suddenly may get a cyan screen without any text or error or sound at all. The machine seems completely unresponsive, even "Ctrl-Alt-Del, 5x down, 1x right, press enter", which in theory should shut down the machine, doesn't work either, so power button seems to be the only option.

Sometimes this happened several times a week, now I haven't seen it this week, last week I think it happened once. I have no idea what may be causing this, I was first suspecting certain chat/virtual meeting room software that my employer has force-installed on it and which launches on Windows start (I think I didn't see these crashes before it was installed), but I think I have seen the crash at least once when I had that utility closed (and I presume a mere app shouldn't be able to crash the system anyway, but maybe it is not crashing it, just putting into an unresponsive state). Or maybe it is the ATI/AMD drivers then?

Oh well, I guess I just need to reinstall Win7 at some point, maybe it fixes it. Or hopefully the laptop is breaking up, then I could get a newer one!

Well I'd suspect one of these, really, especially the latter. I got similar issues when MOBO of my laptop started slowly dying.

edit: I wasn't so cheerful about it thou :D

Well that is a precise description of what my laptop was doing before it died. I even kept a game launched at the background so it doesn't crash.

Great advise, thanks! So when my boss sees me playing Diablo 2 LoD at work, I already know what to tell him.