For anyone who might be interested in trying Linux

I personally recommend Manjaro. Stable, fast, and easy to use. It even comes with Steam preinstalled. Sorry for the shameless advertising lol.

So do I man....so so I...

Im not really a fan of Linux, I took a course in college on Linux and I it didnt impress me.

I did hate Ubuntu, and Linux Mint. But Manjaro is everything they aren't.

@CWEBB04z: Linux is great if you know what you are doing.

Most courses in Linux involve either the server side or the CLI side. I haven't seen any Linux courses that focus on the desktop side.

I'd evaluate new distros from time to time when I get the urge.

Edit: I still have Ubuntu server (dualboot) on my netbook. I use Ubuntu server with MySQL and PHP stuff plus Apache (LAMP).

It's not hard at all.

Yea, I really didn't work with the desktop side.. it was mostly with servers. I worked with Red hat and Fedora Linux and it was boring...

im having a look at solydxk.....seem like an interesting middle ground between a fixed release and a rolling release. i saw it in a linux mag I read and it got a good (i didnt say solid :P....) review. might plonk it on a VM over the weekend and check it out.

"For anyone who might be interested in trying Linux"

said no one ever...

Yeah, a guy on youtube named InfinitlyGalactic did a top 3 rolling release distros and solydXK was number 2. Manjaro was number 1.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koSbb8ciEeA

I prefer Linux for general Desktop use, as I've used it a lot in past desktops that were never gaming PC's. However for gaming not enough games are compatible with it.

Linux is great to revive old machines and give them purpose again, I use a really old AMD 64(1ghz) PC with 512mb DDR1 ram in work for presentations and other stuff it runs really fast with using my favorite Linux Distro Fedora.

my experience is support is fucking terrible.

not for lack of it but of overabundance of it.

with linux there's usually not just 1 way to do something, but 50. so when a person asks a question you end up responses something along the lines of

person1: how do i do (this) in linux?

person2: oh, that's easy, just type (insert cryptic command line command here but not explain what it's actually doing) at the command line

person3: no, don't do that ^^ do this, this is way better because (insert reason why they think their method is superior) : (insert equally cryptic command line command here, again not explaining what command does or what arguments are)

person4: what distro are you on?

person1: (insert distro)

persons5:8 (insert distro) sucks. (insert examples why (insert distro) sucks and why their chosen distro is better)

person9: why on earth are you trying to do (this), just do (this2) instead!

perons10: ^^ no, that's stupid, what are you an noob? i've been on linux since '96 and chat w/ Linus all the time on message boards, person1: just do (this3) instead

person1: uh.. ok. how do i do (this3)

persons2-10: *repeat*

@comp_atkins: haha to be fair your right I got a bit of that when I experienced Linux. I researched fedora and other red hat distros on my own to get a decent level of competence.

When I posted on a Linux forum a question I would get different responses for a simple task and sometimes a flame war would erupt over it haha

I have not tried a Linux setup since like early 2000s and I used Red Hat. I was thinking of trying to get into it again one day.

True that there are a number of ways to perform tasks, ranging from simple to complicated solutions. the most common issue I've had is simply not being familiar with any distro not based on Arch lol.

It's important to visit forums for your particular distro lol.

Manjaro is indeed great in its simplicity while nor sacrificing versatility. I use it myself and adore it. Nevertheless, for complete newbies, elementary OS is probably the way to go.

stuck manjaro on a VM earlier. It was on one of the discs i get with a mag i read.

sadly it was the openbox edition. i used openbox years ago when i used crunchbang on a really old laptop. its grand after much tweaking...but it needs a lot fo tweaking and is not intuitive in the slightest. its really for systems with very limited resources.

i will probably plonk KDE on it at some stage.

I'm happy enough with Ubuntu for now. :P

honestly I was thinking of making my current pc into a Linux studio,

but I have to assemble another rig avengers style first

Yeah, your probably right, my point was that after they get to know linux more, to try out Manjaro if they want. elementary OS, Mint, Ubuntu, and ZorinOS are great starter distros. Though I had a better experience with Zorin than Mint.

Openbox is not my cup of tea, KDE is my personal favorite.

Manjaro is on the same level as these other distros in terms of ease of use, if not easier, but elementary OS takes it a step further I feel.

I never used eOS, so I don't know. But yeah, I find Manjaro easier to use than Ubuntu.

I humbly suggest that you recommend elementary OS to complete n00bs and Manjaro to PC gamers. If they can't figure out how to use Manjaro, they shouldn't be PC gaming to begin with. It's that easy.

Rightio.

@AlexKidd5000 after reading this thread i tried out manjero in virtual box and i have to say i quite like it. it feels a lot more customizable than some of the other distros i've tried. i can see this becoming my favorite distro if i ever switched to linux.

Yeah, I just found Manjaro to be a much better gaming, and all around better OS than Ubuntu, or Mint. Much more solid, and faster, and easier to use. It feels alot like Windows in that games usually just work, and run well. And the way it manages updates is far better than Ubuntu. And kernel upgrades are effortless, and don't break your system, unless you use a kernel that is still deep in development, and is unstable.

And KDE is my shell of choice, since it's the most customizable I've used.

i see Linux just as a free internet-browser-OS lol.

no Adobe or Autodesk software available for it, so it's effectively useless OS for me.

it does look very sleek, though.

Obviously Linux is a lot more than that, and has a number of open source (and maybe closed source) alternatives to many Windows only programs.

elemenaryOS

I admit, it's pretty damn good.