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Good Linux distro for colelge?

Hi all!

 

I am starting online college soon and I need a fast, trusty, and lightweight Linux distro. I was going to upgrade my HP Pavilion dv5 (4GB DDR3, an AMD APU [sorry, I forget] and a 500GB HDD) with a 256 GB SSD so that my PC is as fast as it can get.

 

First off, what's the best SSD for the money? And then, what's a great, easy to set up Linux distro that is good for schooling?

 

Thanks!

 

Probably should have mentioned that I have worked with Linux before. I have installed Ubuntu, Mint, Elementary OS, and I am going to learn how to setup Arch. I just wanted a simple OS that would work out of the gate. I will probably go with Mint MATE or Fedora with GNOME. 

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Ubuntu (with something else than unity) is pretty good for what you want, mint is even better. Other good and relatively easy to setup distros include opensuse, fedora, pclinux

Don't ask to ask, just ask... please 🤨

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Fedora or Ubuntu

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Yeah, ubuntu is not bad but I personaly like Mint Mate or Cinamon. It's similar to windows so you can use it right of the bat but it has it's own spin and functionality and alot of settings if you are into that. Ubuntu (unity) is kinda boring to me, don't quite know why but it just is.

 

I sugest you go with Linux Mint Mate, that's what I use alongside w10. Just set up a 20gb+ partition. You probably don't need more than 40-50bg for linux. And if you dual boot remember this: DISABLE QUICK BOOT IN WINDOWS so you can access all partitions on linux, if you don't then you'll be using only that one partition that you have set up for linux.

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Yeah, ubuntu is not bad but I personaly like Mint Mate or Cinamon. It's similar to windows so you can use it right of the bat but it has it's own spin and functionality and alot of settings if you are into that. Ubuntu (unity) is kinda boring to me, don't quite know why but it just is.

 

I sugest you go with Linux Mint Mate, that's what I use alongside w10. Just set up a 20gb+ partition. You probably don't need more than 40-50bg for linux. And if you dual boot remember this: DISABLE QUICK BOOT IN WINDOWS so you can access all partitions on linux, if you don't then you'll be using only that one partition that you have set up for linux.

Hows this Linux Mint Mate thing? I can try it out with LiveUSB thing right? 

 [spoiler=CORMAC]CPU:Intel celeron 1.6ghz RAM:Kingston 400mhz 1.99gb MOBO:MSI G31TM-P21 GPU:Will add one later on! CASE:local ROUTER D-Link 2750U, D-LINK 2730U MOUSE:HP,DELL,ViP KEYBOARD: v7 SPEAKERS:Creative 245  MONITOR:AOC E970Sw HEADSET: Sony MDRx05s UPS:conex ups avr 500va PSU:idk OD:Samsung super writemaster STORAGE:80 gb seagate+ Seagate 1TB OS:Windows xp sp3 themed to Windows 7 + Linux |Rest all pc in my house will be updated from time-time

COMING SOON

 

 

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Ubuntu is awful. If you're suggesting Ubuntu without Unity, then just suggest Debian with GNOME.

 

You should probably pick Debian, CentOS, or Fedora.

--Neil Hanlon

Operations Engineer

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Manjaro, or Debian / Ubuntu (Xubuntu, Lubuntu, not Unity

Linux Mint

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Hi all!

 

I am starting online college soon and I need a fast, trusty, and lightweight Linux distro. I was going to upgrade my HP Pavilion dv5 (4GB DDR3, an AMD APU [sorry, I forget] and a 500GB HDD) with a 256 GB SSD so that my PC is as fast as it can get.

 

First off, what's the best SSD for the money? And then, what's a great, easy to set up Linux distro that is good for schooling?

 

Thanks!

 

If you're new to Linux, you should try Ubuntu. Perhaps not the standard Unity flavour, since you want something lightweight. Lubuntu and Xubuntu are both great. Linux Mint uses Cinnamon for its desktop environment, which a lot of people really like, but it uses even more resources than Unity.

 

If you're feeling adventurous and want to learn a thing or two about Linux, you could try installing Arch Linux. It's more lightweight than Ubuntu, always comes with the latest versions of applications, the community is awesome and you'll know exactly what's running on your system since you set it up yourself. 

 

Ubuntu is awful. If you're suggesting Ubuntu without Unity, then just suggest Debian with GNOME.

 

You should probably pick Debian, CentOS, or Fedora.

 

Stop saying things are awful without giving a reason why. Ubuntu is fine for new users. CentOS is an enterprise distribution and it's ridiculous to suggest on a personal laptop for school over something like Ubuntu.

Linux expert.

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Also, since you have an AMD APU, you should know that the official, proprietary AMD graphics drivers for Linux are kinda bad. They got slightly better after Steam for Linux came out, but expect slightly less performance, battery life and more noise/heat that you would get running Windows.

Linux expert.

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Gentoo!!!

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Hows this Linux Mint Mate thing? I can try it out with LiveUSB thing right? 

So it's linux Mint and the environment is called Mate, just like Uniti, Cinnamon, KDE and so on. Cinnamon is the default one and it's very similar to Mate, but I prefere Mate, just personal preference.

 

Yeah, you can totally download it just like any other linux edition and make a live USB and try it out, if you like it, then go ahead and click that install button.

Here's the download links for you to try it out if you want ofcoruse :)http://www.linuxmint.com/download.php

 

I love to make the terminal semi-transparent and do some other tweeks.

One more thing I like alot about it is if you have two .pdf files (or something scrolable) snaped on two sides of the monitor (yes, there is snaping) you can scroll each of them without clicking and then scrolling. Windows 10 now has that feature but 8.1 didn't have it and as a student myself I find that wery WERY usefull and it's just a minor thing.

 

Go ahead, tinker around with any distro you choose to download and if you break it or something, hey, it's free, just install it again. :)

Free up some space on your drive, don't make a partition, make it unpartitioned space and just insert your usb, and choose "install alongside windows" if you want dual boot and let it do it's thing. Don't bother setting up partitions yourself. Maybe later when you know a thing or two but I really think even then you don't need to frustrate yourself with that stuff (it's because you need a special extended partition and inside it some more partitions, swap size etc.). Just do what I told you and you will be fine as long as you don't delete the wrong partition :P

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If you really want a Linux, you should try Linux Mint.

I personally think you should use Chrome OS because it's really lightweight and doesn't need that much power.

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Hi all!

 

I am starting online college soon and I need a fast, trusty, and lightweight Linux distro. I was going to upgrade my HP Pavilion dv5 (4GB DDR3, an AMD APU [sorry, I forget] and a 500GB HDD) with a 256 GB SSD so that my PC is as fast as it can get.

 

First off, what's the best SSD for the money? And then, what's a great, easy to set up Linux distro that is good for schooling?

 

Thanks!

What are you studying in college? For example Finance? Then Windows is the best thing to run for you. IT? CentOS (or red hat if your college can give you a license). It all depends on you classes. Some will require windows, others will give you the freedom to choose.

 

As for distro, it comes down to what you want out of it, if your planning on devops/sysadmin career path, learn Red Hat (CentOS is basically the same) or Ubuntu (purely because AWS is more like ubuntu).

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I personally like Mint.

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Stop saying things are awful without giving a reason why. Ubuntu is fine for new users. CentOS is an enterprise distribution and it's ridiculous to suggest on a personal laptop for school over something like Ubuntu.

 

  1. Unity is a piece of shit that needs to go die in a hole. For many reasons: resource consumption, awful coding, just being shit in general.
  2. Canonical is a trading company that is trying their damndest to profit off of the FOSS community
  3. Ubuntu /ships/ with programs that have been or are historically malware/adware.
  4. Ubuntu constantly violates tons of free system distribution guidelines
  5. Weird stuff with Ubuntu shipping user search strings to Canonical's servers.
  6. Privacy concerns rivaling people being butthurt about Windows 10.
  7. And much, much more.

If someone is going to suggest "Ubuntu without Unity" then why even suggest Ubuntu at all? That's pretty much the only thing Ubuntu is known for. Uninstalling unity will leave you with a ton of broken packages just to install some other DE like GNOME, KDE, etc. Why not just get the parent distribution (Debian) and install whatever you want on it. Last time I checked, a basic Ubuntu install was so bloated that it made Debian's base footprint look like it was invisible (and it's quite small to begin with...)

 

CentOS is not an "enterprise distribution". CentOS is free, and used by tons of people in the Linux world, including myself. Not only on my servers, but also on one of my laptops. I run Debian, Fedora, and CentOS on my different machines. I think you're thinking of RHEL.

--Neil Hanlon

Operations Engineer

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Gentoo!!!

 

Wow! What a great idea. Thanks man. I will definitely install that. /s

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What are you studying in college? For example Finance? Then Windows is the best thing to run for you. IT? CentOS (or red hat if your college can give you a license). It all depends on you classes. Some will require windows, others will give you the freedom to choose.

 

As for distro, it comes down to what you want out of it, if your planning on devops/sysadmin career path, learn Red Hat (CentOS is basically the same) or Ubuntu (purely because AWS is more like ubuntu).

I am doing basic college classes. Comp 1 and General Psych. I'm in high school so these classes only really require a word processor. I know Mint has LibreOffice and Arch and a lot of other distros can get them easily. I would perfer to have a word processor preinstalled.

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Ubuntu, if you ever need tech support the people at your college might have experience with it. I was surprised to learn that Ubuntu is supported at my college.

Lord of Helium.

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  1. Unity is a piece of shit that needs to go die in a hole. For many reasons: resource consumption, awful coding, just being shit in general.
  2. Canonical is a trading company that is trying their damndest to profit off of the FOSS community
  3. Ubuntu /ships/ with programs that have been or are historically malware/adware.
  4. Ubuntu constantly violates tons of free system distribution guidelines
  5. Weird stuff with Ubuntu shipping user search strings to Canonical's servers.
  6. Privacy concerns rivaling people being butthurt about Windows 10.
  7. And much, much more.

If someone is going to suggest "Ubuntu without Unity" then why even suggest Ubuntu at all? That's pretty much the only thing Ubuntu is known for. Uninstalling unity will leave you with a ton of broken packages just to install some other DE like GNOME, KDE, etc. Why not just get the parent distribution (Debian) and install whatever you want on it. Last time I checked, a basic Ubuntu install was so bloated that it made Debian's base footprint look like it was invisible (and it's quite small to begin with...)

 

CentOS is not an "enterprise distribution". CentOS is free, and used by tons of people in the Linux world, including myself. Not only on my servers, but also on one of my laptops. I run Debian, Fedora, and CentOS on my different machines. I think you're thinking of RHEL.

 

 

Tinfoil hat much? Ubuntu is the most popular Linux distribution. The biggest advantage of using Ubuntu (or an Ubuntu flavour) for new users is that if you have any problems with it you can just google "bluetooth not working ubuntu" and 99% you'll get an answer. That's because it's so popular.

 

CentOS is RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) with the Red Hat branding removed for trademark reasons. It's an enterprise-oriented distro, focused on stability in an enterprise environment. For that reason, it ships very old versions of packages in its package repositories and some newer stuff is missing entirely. If you're using it on your personal laptop, that's great, but to suggest someone to do the same without explaining the implications of doing so is stupid. Fedora is the end-user distribution from some of the same people behind RHEL/CentOS.

Linux expert.

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  1. Unity is a piece of shit that needs to go die in a hole. For many reasons: resource consumption, awful coding, just being shit in general.
  2. Canonical is a trading company that is trying their damndest to profit off of the FOSS community
  3. Ubuntu /ships/ with programs that have been or are historically malware/adware.
  4. Ubuntu constantly violates tons of free system distribution guidelines
  5. Weird stuff with Ubuntu shipping user search strings to Canonical's servers.
  6. Privacy concerns rivaling people being butthurt about Windows 10.
  7. And much, much more.

If someone is going to suggest "Ubuntu without Unity" then why even suggest Ubuntu at all? That's pretty much the only thing Ubuntu is known for. Uninstalling unity will leave you with a ton of broken packages just to install some other DE like GNOME, KDE, etc. Why not just get the parent distribution (Debian) and install whatever you want on it. Last time I checked, a basic Ubuntu install was so bloated that it made Debian's base footprint look like it was invisible (and it's quite small to begin with...)

 

CentOS is not an "enterprise distribution". CentOS is free, and used by tons of people in the Linux world, including myself. Not only on my servers, but also on one of my laptops. I run Debian, Fedora, and CentOS on my different machines. I think you're thinking of RHEL.

 

 

Im pretty sure he means something like xubuntu or lubuntu not ubuntu then uninstalling everything.

 

My vote goes for arch or something arch based like manjaro.

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Tinfoil hat much? Ubuntu is the most popular Linux distribution. The biggest advantage of using Ubuntu (or an Ubuntu flavour) for new users is that if you have any problems with it you can just google "bluetooth not working ubuntu" and 99% you'll get an answer. That's because it's so popular.

 

CentOS is RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) with the Red Hat branding removed for trademark reasons. It's an enterprise-oriented distro, focused on stability in an enterprise environment. For that reason, it ships very old versions of packages in its package repositories and some newer stuff is missing entirely. If you're using it on your personal laptop, that's great, but to suggest someone to do the same without explaining the implications of doing so is stupid. Fedora is the end-user distribution from some of the same people behind RHEL/CentOS.

 

CentOS is not RHEL. They're entirely different. You have no idea what you're talking about. I'd prove you wrong on all of your points... but you'll probably just try and tell me that you know everything and I'm just making stuff up. Packages aren't "old". Want to talk about old packages? Go look at the Ubuntu apt repositories.

 

Ubuntu is also /not/ the most popular Linux distro. Among people new to Linux, maybe. But not the most popular.

--Neil Hanlon

Operations Engineer

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