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Which version of Linux...?

Journyman16

Journyman16

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Nov 26, 2014
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We have 3 Win computers in the house. 2 x desktops and a laptop. All currently on Win7 Ultimate. The laptop seems OK but the others are experiencing problems.

Caveat: I have 25 years doing desktop support so unless you know something radical to try, please no 'have you tried...?' comments.

Problems seem to have come from Windows Updates and involve connectivity issues over wireless and more recently my LAn connection (which I connected due to intermittent wireless issues) Things improved a bit when I shut off the Win Wifi service and installed the specific adapter software, but there are still issues.

After all these years as a Win user/support I think I've had enough crap. The other choice is to wait and see if Win10 is any good but given they abandoned Win9 as a lost cause I'm not hopeful Win10 isn't going to be another Vista.

So... I am wanting to try Linux - been promising myself to do it for several years now and have built Linux USB's for diags and repair stuff, but not used it as an OS for general use.

What I would like Linux to do:

1. Run a decent office-style software - specifically word and excel but a powerpoint-like app would be good.
2. Provide good video/audio editing software - e.g. I have the AVS suite and use Audacity a bit. Also have a stack of LP's I want to record over to CD.
3. Run Steam if possible. (I realise that's probably up to Steam & I don't know if they support Linux)
4. Run Adobe software such as InDesign and Photoshop. (see above comment re Steam)
5. Support my hardware - don't think this is an issue as the only gotcha's I've seen for Linux was with NVidia graphics. We're AMD with Raedon 7700 cards.
6. Able to deal with Android phone stuff - figure this isn't a biggie as I had to DL Cygwin to do decent stuff in Windows anyway.
7. Decent GUI for the OS - I'm not fussed about learning a new one but the missus will be.

So... am I looking at Ubuntu or is there something better?

(I've had a look at Mint a while back but not sure if it is a bit light on or just I haven't installed what it needs to be more powerful. Was also a while ago and I don't know how fast the developer network runs for the variants of Linux. Obviously some will be well supported and responsive to change and others may not be)

Advice on best Linux version or any other advice re software etc would be welcome.
 
Journyman16 said:
1. Run a decent office-style software - specifically word and excel but a powerpoint-like app would be good.
Click to expand...

OpenOffice or LibreOffice both do all this. I've heard OpenOffice is more reliable for heavy-duty office work but for personal use I've had great results with LibreOffice. TBPH I find it better than the MS productivity suite because it doesn't try to steer the user into using shitty MS formats. It's also superior for handling PDFs and PDF is the most universal document format.

2. Provide good video/audio editing software - e.g. I have the AVS suite and use Audacity a bit. Also have a stack of LP's I want to record over to CD.
Click to expand...

It really depends on what you need, professional-grade stuff you won't find much of but using an emulator like WINE, it's possible to get them to work. If you're just looking at converting from different formats and working with codecs then many of the tools available for Windows are actually based on software mainly developed for Linux.

3. Run Steam if possible. (I realise that's probably up to Steam & I don't know if they support Linux)
Click to expand...

There is a native Steam client for Linux now, has been for a while. Just don't expect to play games that require DirectX (although those should work with WINE)

4. Run Adobe software such as InDesign and Photoshop. (see above comment re Steam)
Click to expand...

Again, it runs on WINE but you may have to take some time to implement workarounds for minor bugs. If you just need casual image editing, GIMP is really good and runs natively, I replaced PSP with it years ago on Windows and haven't found it to be lacking in features.

5. Support my hardware - don't think this is an issue as the only gotcha's I've seen for Linux was with NVidia graphics. We're AMD with Raedon 7700 cards.
Click to expand...

Hardware support has really picked up in the past few years, so it shouldn't be a problem.

6. Able to deal with Android phone stuff - figure this isn't a biggie as I had to DL Cygwin to do decent stuff in Windows anyway.
Click to expand...

Definitely not a problem.

7. Decent GUI for the OS - I'm not fussed about learning a new one but the missus will be.
Click to expand...

you have a wealth of options here and some distros give you a login menu that allows you to select which desktop environment you want to load.

I haven't tried Mint but the latest version has been getting rave reviews, I would say stick with the LTS version if you'd rather something that "just works" as opposed to a setup that you have to tinker with constantly. The built-in package manager can likely get you quickly set up with all the software mentioned above, for software you can't find in the Mint repos there's always the option of downloading the tarball and compiling it yourself (fairly easy once you set up the developer utilities)
 
Thanks, excellent response.

I'm presuming home networking is not an issue with any of the major versions? We have the PVR and all computers/phones linked as needed. I figure if Linux had any issues with networks I'd have heard about it before now...
 
Personally partial to Gentoo. While more time consuming to install with compiling, this provides for a lot of flexibility and optimization.

Fedora was a nice pre-built distro, last I ran one.
 
Thanks for the responses. I haven't heard of Gentoo but will take a look - thinking I should probably start with something that lets me work while I learn the ropes then maybe step up a bit in complexity.

GIMP looks good for me, but the missus is a bit scared of change so I'm rebuilding her windows PC. Hopefully she'll get another year of crap on it before I have to do it again. :D Might Ghost it as soon as everything is on it.

My PC has decided this morning I don't have permissions to access programs I was using yesterday - time to kill Win... :D
 
One more question, if you guys don't mind - it seems each distro has a forum available and I figure look for the most active - it might also be the distro with the most issues but at least there will be lots working on things. However is there a good general Linux forum site? I'm thinking of something along the lines of forums.xda-developers.com for Android devices...
 
hardcore Linux heads prefer IRC to forums mostly, so forum activity may not give you a clear picture of actual support potential. the Archlinux wiki is hands down the best source of information for help with most utilities and programs, unlike other shitty wikis *cough*UBUNTU*cough* they actually keep all the articles updated.
 
Will check that - I've been on the Mint Community but have other things to sort first.

I ran Mint from USB to try it out - seemed good but then I had issues running the install - took a while but I found out why. For some weird fucking reason, Windows had meesed up the installs - I run Win7 and Win8.1 on the same HDD, different partitions. They share a 500GB drive. I also have a 1TB and 3 x 2TB drives in the box and for some strange reason Windows had installed the system (Win7 originally) on the 500GB but the system FILES are on the 1TB! And of course when I installed Win8.1 it followed the original pattern.

When Mint tries to install it seems to get confused as to where to install - can't blame it, I don't understand my setup either.

So, because I don't want to get rid of Win until I have Linux working the way I want and understand it properly, now I have to do a full rebuild...

le sigh... where's my abacus? :D
 
thujone said:
hardcore Linux heads prefer IRC to forums mostly, so forum activity may not give you a clear picture of actual support potential. the Archlinux wiki is hands down the best source of information for help with most utilities and programs, unlike other shitty wikis *cough*UBUNTU*cough* they actually keep all the articles updated.
Click to expand...

Can you recommend IRCs?
 
freenode is where the major linux channels are, i sometimes idle #archlinux and #archlinux-arm but that's not really going to be useful unless you're running arch
 
Yeah, I'm familiar with freenode. It's exactly what a geek on a message board told me years ago when I asked what the best geek forum was. Thanks for the confirmation.
 
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