A former Linux newbie; how I chose: Word of mouth, Internet research, led me to Ubuntu as the best combination of Windows-user friendliness, stability, hardware compatibility and applications offerings. I wanted to have as seamless a transition from Windows as possible, with as little Linux skill required as possible (even though I had moderate experience with BSD Unix from the 1980s.) Ubuntu's Gutsy Gibbon met those requirements fairly well, although I suspect every major distro makes the same claims.
Since then I've done a fair amount of distro hopping, especially since Unetbootin made it so easy to set up a Live CD installation on a USB drive from virtually any distro, obviating the need to burn a new CD/DVD for every new release. I still keep coming back to Ubuntu for many of the same reasons. Ubuntu seems to have fixed the few problems that existed in back the Gutsy days (sound and NVidia driver issues mostly). The only other Linux flavors that have attracted me were Mint and Mepis, both Ubuntu variants. I've just had too many issues arise with Mandriva, Fedora and other RPM-based distros (probably arising as much from my own lack of Linux skill as anything). There is a reason why Ubuntu is the most popular distro out there and Mint is #3. It just seems you don't need to be Linux guru to get started. For those Windows refugees among us who needed a desktop OS we can actually use productively as well as learn from, Ubuntu fits that bill. One can develop a reasonable amount of Linux skill while still using the system in much the same way we used Windows. In summary, ease of transition from windows, encompassing stability, hardware compatibility and applications offerings were the deciding factors. On Tue, 2010-03-09 at 22:58 -0800, chris (fool) mccraw wrote: > my 3/4-baked theory is that many people new to linux use what their > friends suggest, or what they first or most compellingly hear about. > that is, they don't do comparative research between available/relevant > distributions and choose logically. > > _______________________________________________ > PLUG mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug _______________________________________________ PLUG mailing list [email protected] http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
