The Distrochooser helps you to find the suitable Linux distribution based on your needs!

There are countless Distros that do not always make it easy to choose the one that best suits each person's needs and knowledge. This page, through a small test, proposes the Distro or Distros that best fit.

  • FOSS Is Fun@lemmy.ml
    ·
    1 year ago

    It misses one important choice: "I want to get notified of new releases of the operating system and want to have a graphical upgrade path."

    Otherwise people just run their no longer supported OS until something stops working (I've seen this countless times ...), as very few people follow blog posts or social media feeds of their operating system.

    This rules out lots of supposedly "beginner friendly" distributions, such as elementary OS or Linux Mint, as they don't notify users about the availability of a new distribution release. Elementary OS doesn't even offer in-place upgrades and requires a reinstallation.

    • splendoruranium@infosec.pub
      ·
      1 year ago

      Is that just something that's intrinsically missing from some distros due to technical constraints or is it a regular type of feature the simply hasn't been implemented (yet) due to... human constraints?

      • FOSS Is Fun@lemmy.ml
        ·
        1 year ago

        Linux Mint nowadays supports release upgrades, but you have to follow their blog to know when a new major Mint release is out and you have to manually install mintupgrade and do the upgrade.

        So it is definitely not caused by technical constraints, as Mint has implemented the difficult part (providing and testing an upgrade path) already. Notifying the user about a new release upgrade shouldn't be too difficult? E. g. in the most simple form you could probably preinstall a package that does nothing at first, but receives an update once the next Mint release is out to send a notification to the user to inform about a new Mint release.

        When it comes to elementary OS, I think they could support in-place upgrades, as they properly use metapackages (unlike Mint, which marks most packages as manually installed and doesn't really utilise automatically installed packages and metapackages in a way that you would expect on a Ubuntu-based distro), but they probably don't want to allocate / don't have the resources to test an official upgrade path.

        But again, I don't understand why it is so difficult for elementary OS to at least provide a simple notification to the user that a new version is out. Even if the users have to reinstall, it is critical to inform them that their OS is about to become end of life. You know, people do things like online banking on their computers ...

        It's the first thing I check with every distribution and if it doesn't have an EOL / upgrade notification, it is immediately out.

  • iusearchbtw@lemmy.sdf.org
    ·
    1 year ago

    Why does this quiz have so many fuckin distributions? If a newbie is looking for a distro to install, why would you ever recommend anything more niche than Ubuntu/Mint, or Endeavour if they're interested in bleeding edge? I answered the questions as though I was new to Linux and got a massive list of every Ubuntu and Fedora derivative, with Manjaro sprinkled in for good measure.

    • Zerush@lemmy.ml
      ·
      1 year ago

      Look at the colors, which shows which distros ajust best o worse to your results, with the correspondin descriptions which match your answers in the test. Better to have a list to choice between 10 or 20 distros than between several hundreds which exist, impossible to know all of these. This large quantity, on the one hand, is an advantage, because everyone can find exactly the OS they need for their purposes, but it can also result in a problem of compatibility for the development of software and availability of certain drivers.

  • wviana@lemmy.eco.br
    ·
    1 year ago

    Arch user. Just had a really good experience with Debian on old 32bits hardware. The survey suggested Debian. I'm thinking if I shouldn't use Debian everywhere instead of Arch everywhere.

  • cgarret3@lemm.ee
    ·
    1 year ago

    I like the tool and am going to keep playing with it, but in my first run I’ve found that it seems to have an issue with the “App Store” vs “terminal command” installation question. My final results, having chosen “terminal commands,” listed some distros as not recommended because of manual install, including arch, gentoo, void, etc. Otherwise big thumbs up

    Edited to add: https://distrochooser.de/en/d51d8e6a10f1/ my results

    • Zerush@lemmy.ml
      ·
      1 year ago

      I don't know this Distro, but if this is what you like there is nothing to say. In the end this is what matters, that you like it.

  • auf@lemmy.ml
    ·
    1 year ago

    I didn't know about CRUX. It looks good so maybe my next daily driver

    https://crux.nu/

    • Zerush@lemmy.ml
      ·
      1 year ago

      Some distros are less intuitive to use than others, apart from also having particularities that others do not have and that require reading the manual, at least in part, also for 'pros' who are not familiar with the specific distro. Ubuntu, Q4OS or Mint, easy to use, are not the same as Parrot, Kali (both are for IT experts), 4MLinux (very lightweight, but not so easy to handle as it seems) or Gentoo (among others), which are certainly not made for newbies.

      • myliltoehurts@lemm.ee
        ·
        1 year ago

        I understand that, but just because I'm capable of working with a less friendly system doesn't mean it's a good thing. If anything I'd still list it as a negative aspect that it requires more knowledge and research.

        If there was a question with an answer like "I'm looking for a challenge" it'd make sense that it's listed as a positive.