[kwlug-disc] Which distribution should I use?

[Charles McColm]

Here's my take on which distribution to use. I wrote this as part of a Linux Explored book I was writing on my blog https://charlesmccolm.com/node/76:

One of the questions I get asked is "Which Linux distribution should I use?" My answer usually begins with "it depends..." There are a lot of factors to consider:

Home or Business Use (or both)?

Hardware available (are you running on a Netbook with 1GB of RAM  or an i7-6700 with 16GB of RAM)

Specifically what types of activities do you want to do on your computer? If you want to do audio engineering a distribution like KXStudio because of it's low latency kernel. Artists might appreciate the Fedora Design Suite "spin" of Fedora Linux. Programmers might choose Ubuntu for it's wealth of tools.

How much experience do you already have with Linux or UNIX-like operating systems?

What kind of support network do you have? Is there a friend who runs a particular distribution who can help?

What desktop environment do you feel most comfortable with?

Not everyone has an idea about what to answer for each of these questions at the start. The good news is that because *most* Linux distributions are free (as in cost) you can try one and if you don't like it, or if it doesn't do what you want, try another.

Some Linux distributions work better with particular hardware than others. Lubuntu has a light-weight desktop environment (LXDE) based around the Ubuntu collection of software making it one of the better choices on a low-powered Netbook, but it's not quite as slick as a KDE-based distribution like Kubuntu.

I tend to break Linux distributions down into 4 categories based on how software is installed (their package management system):

    Distributions based on the Debian package system (including popular distributions like Ubuntu, Zorin, and Linux Mint)
    Distributions based on the RedHat package system (including popular distributions like Fedora, CentOS, and Mandriva)
    Distributions based on compiling source code (including popular distributions like Slackware, Arch, and Gentoo)
    Distributions based on some other package management system

Debian-based and RPM-based (Redhat Package Management) distributions make up most of the distributions out there. It's not really a critical question to ask, but if you have some familiarity with a particular system it's a good idea to stick with a distribution that uses that system.

Which distribution you decided to use should be based on what you think will fit your needs. Of course there are hundreds upon hundreds of Linux distributions, but I find it helpful to stick to the most popular distributions since they tend to be the best documented, easiest to get help for, and have the most developers.