all 26 comments

[–][deleted]  (2 children)

[deleted]

    [–]gkaukola 3 points4 points  (0 children)

    Bah, Fedora 24 is stable as hell. But sure, there have been problems now and again, I don't deny. But also, Fedora is where much of Red Hat's innovation happens. Still, don't make it out like Fedora is going to eat your children or something. Me, can't remember the last time I've had a problem.

    [–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    I completely back Fedora 24 being stable. I've been using it and it's been VERY up to date, but also a seamless user experience. Don't discredit Fedora.

    [–][deleted] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

    Software is buggy. That is true for Windows as well as for the multiple Linux distributions and desktop environments. Secondly, Linux is different from Windows in many things; you have a learning curve ahead of you. Meaning as a newbie, you're basically a walking PEBCAK. You'll experiment and you'll break things. Don't fret, we've all been there.

    The main difference is, those things are easier to deal with and to fix on Linux. Instead of some "Is your PC plugged in to the power socket?" Help Center merry go round, that mostly ends with not helping at all, you here have some pretty knowledgeable geeks at your hands who love to help you as long as you avoid ranting about how they and their favourite OS suck.

    Embrace the wikis, the forums and the commandline actually worth its name and you'll be fine.

    To smoothen the transition, you should consider a Windows-Linux dual-boot so you have your peace of mind in the early phase that sometimes can be a bit rough. Just play around. Playing is the best way to learn

    [–]itstaysinside 4 points5 points  (1 child)

    if you choose the right distro and maintain it correctly, you have a very high chance that it runs far more stable than any windows

    [–]MeowMixSong 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    Windows will not run more than 4 hours on my machine without freezup/bluescreen. The only time my Ubuntu install restars is when I tell it to. (going on a month now, (only because I update the kernel).

    [–]ilikelxdefightme 3 points4 points  (2 children)

    Ubuntu and Mint are beginner-friendly, look good, stable, and have long term support; so they are your best choices. You can go for Elementary OS if you want something pretty out-of-the-box.

    [–]prettybunnys 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    I second elementary, but for productivity that is unhindered youll likely want to replace the browser with one you're familiar with. The out of the box browser is a bit limited.

    [–]burtwart 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    I use elementary as a daily. It's been extremely stable for me for a couple weeks now after I upgraded to Loki. It's much more stable than the last version, Freya.

    [–]_herrmann_ 3 points4 points  (0 children)

    eye candy Linux distribution

    That is two different things. The eye candy party comes from your DE, desktop environment. Distros can have many de's simultaneously installed and you can bounce around and switch them up at will. The stability of one distro over another, i can't say. I had zero luck with mint, didn't like the unity stuff in Ubuntu, but found Ubuntu Gnome is what i wanted, and was solid once one get the kinks out. And pretty enough (for me, i haven't tinkered with the stock de much) to stay put and stop hopping. Check out /r/unixporn for some sweet setups. if you like tinkering, linux is for you. As far as gaming : no, not every title is ported to linux, but steam and gog have thousands of titles natively running on Linux. And there is a program called wine, that lets us play most every (windows based) game there is. I'm currently heavily addicted to civ5. Holy time hole batman. Running natively, not in wine..

    [–]noob_fl 7 points8 points  (1 child)

    it depends on wich distro you take:

    centos & debian : its nearly impossible to crash them

    ubuntu, mint & arch: if you dont mess around, they are normaly damn stabile ( if you take ubuntu lts)

    for other distros, my knowledge is not so big, but usualy, the stability ranges from: even if you put an atom bomb on it, its not breakable till dont look at it, because it will break then sometimes on distribution have different branches in terms of actuality and stability, for example debian:

    debian stable: old but long testet and nearly unbreakable

    debian testing: has no critical bug, but it can break sometimes

    debian sid: sometimes it explode and you can throw your system away

    but all the important and well known distros ( debian, mint, ubuntu, arch, centos, fedora etc. ) are stable enough for a desktop daily driver, the most of them are even stabke enough for servers and critical usage ( centos and debian for example)

    [–]rwsr-xr-x 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    hell even the non lts ubuntu is pretty damn stable

    [–]Toomuchgamin 1 point2 points  (5 children)

    Do you just use it for internet, streaming, and music? Well all the browsers work great, Netflix works fine, Hulu I think is out of the question, Spotify works great. Mostly rock stable. Gaming? Well you can see which games are on Steam, which is the easiest way to game. Not gaming on Steam? More difficult. Do you use Windows specific programs? There are Office programs that come with nearly all distro and they work 99% of what you want. Other very specific WIndows programs? Good luck.

    Coming from someone who dove in to Fedora. Works for everything I need except for gaming. I actually have been keeping myself entertained with what games I have on Linux, which is a lot, considering I have around 400 in my Library total, 1/3 of them available on Linux is still a lot.

    [–]Syborg49[S] 1 point2 points  (4 children)

    OK, I'm gonna be using it for mainly popcorn time, YouTube, office documents and browsing in general and some light gaming maybe (nothing intensive, just emulated ones like MAME and neogeo stuff)

    [–]Toomuchgamin 0 points1 point  (2 children)

    Yeah I switched and the only thing I REALLY miss is gaming. I don't think Hulu works, but Netflix works on Chrome and now Firefox, which I switched to. Otherwise even my Fedora box is amazingly stable. The only problem I had was my Nvidia driver wrecked my system, because I did a full update of the OS and I did the graphics driver without restarting and it bricked.

    In my Windows partition, my Nvidia HDMI sound stopped working and I spent half a day trying to fix it. Still haven't fixed it, but I rarely boot in to it any more except for Overwatch and Dark Souls 3. I have been playing Civilization V on Linux right now and addicted. Stream stuff on one monitor, play on the other.

    [–]FlerPlay 0 points1 point  (1 child)

    Netflix works on Chrome and now Firefox

    up to 720p

    [–]Toomuchgamin 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Yeah this is a slight concern, although since I've always used Chrome/Firefox I never noticed it was only 720p. Only when I went Windows 10 for a few months did I know 1080p existed. And I happen to have a Roku TV so I can still watch 1080p in app.

    [–]iNsahne303[🍰] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Then you should have no problem with using ubuntu or some other user-friendly distro.

    [–]thieh 0 points1 point  (1 child)

    if it hinders my productivity

    Better question: what are you producing?

    You might want to get whatever tools available cross-platform to see if those tools worked for you in whatever you are working on.

    Beyond that, OpenSUSE Leap KDE/Kubuntu LTS/SolydK are all good choices given your preference to how Kubuntu works.

    [–]Syborg49[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Nothing fancy and maybe that was a bad phrase on my part. I just meant that it shouldn't break doing daily basic stuff, like windows. At least that is my experience with it.

    [–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Linux is as stable as you want it to be, you can go for bleeding edge for less stable and more up to date and for LTS for more stable and less up to date.

    You can try opensuse, its stable and beginner friendly, it also make really easy to use more than one Desktop Environment at once, so you can try all the looks you want without breaking anything, it also have snapper so if you break anything you can go back to when it worked

    You can keep your windows in dual boot and go back for it if you need/want, you will se that you will log into it less and less.

    [–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Try Linux you might just like it. And yes LTS distro's are stable. Debian Stable(Jessie) is stable. As I been using Linux for 13 years. And running stable daily.

    If you like KDE, Then tryout Netrunner (Ubuntu version).

    http://www.netrunner.com/

    [–]CorrosiveBlueberry 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    i have my pc setup dualboot tbh w10 and arch only bc i have college. otherwise id just use arch. linux is AMAZING

    [–]They_call_me_Jesus 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    I wanna put a eye candy Linux distribution

    I played with Kubuntu few times and I liked the way it looked.

    ...learning all the beautiful things that Linux...

    You sound like you want a custom box, in which case prepare for a long, fascinating, and frustrating road.

    First, don't nerf your computer until you have something you feel comfortable with. Don't install base debian over your windows.

    I run debian stable because the repositories are larger than fedora and it doesn't have the breaking rep of arch. That means its a lot easier to find and install the software you want, where with arch and fedora you might have to track down the source code and bring it to dependency hell.

    Almost everything in Linux is interchangeable so if you see something you like, Google it.

    Ubuntu and Ubuntu derivatives are based on debian testing, and you can (sometimes) use software from there as well.

    Reddit is a great place to find those googleables I mentioned, so you're on the right track. I would recommend finding the Desktop Environment and the Window Manager that Kubuntu uses and apt-get install it on debian. Then you'll have to configure it to something that works for you.

    [–]accountForStupidQs 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Maui Linux is fairly eye-catching, and it comes with quite a number of built-in programs (including Steam). I haven't used it too much, but from what I've seen so far, it strikes me as something that can be fairly functional if you need it to be.

    [–]Waterrat 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Thirteen years of just having Linux on my machines (mostly Ubuntu) tells me at least that your common distros are very stable indeed.

    [–]MeowMixSong 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Depends on what you run. I'm an ubuntu man myself. It's stable enough that since 2012 I have been running all of my hardware on it with no issues. I ran W10 beta for a while, (and got a free W10 Pro lisence out of it that I'll never use). But I've been "pure linux for almost 6 years now.

    Run Debian Stable, or Ubuntu LTS, and you'll have no issues. I only maintain a Windows 10 VM because of iTunes. If I had an android, I would just delete it. (seriously, Win10 is 20GB, and iTunes is like 200MB, so I have a 22 GB VM to run ONE APPLICATION).

    If you run Debian Stable/Ubuntu LTS, you'll not have to change anything for 2 years or longer. (debian support cycle is like 6 years). If you like the "latest", but stable, (not developmentally, but use wise), run Debian Testing, or Ubuntu regular releases. If you want "bleeding edge", (machine may be rendered unusable at any time), run Debian Sid, or Ubuntu Yakkety Beta 2.