What Distro would you recommend for me?

[Sychic]

Just now, Dat Guy said:

elementary OS is not a minimalistic front end experience.

Looks pretty minimalistic from what I've seen

[Den15]

1 hour ago, Dat Guy said:

I really wonder why I even tried reasoning in this thread as the original question was not relevant for the solution ...

We probably missed the point. To someone coming from Windows, being this the first attempt at searching distros we should've seen it coming.

 

He probably wanted a middle ground between a macosx and windows, but we gotta say it @Sychic :

 

When it comes to Linux minimalism is not GUI, you probably meant "clean and sleek", and by that we could have told you: manjaro xfce (or kde if you want something more modern looking), mint, maybe even Pop!_OS (19.04) or Ubuntu (19.04). Since you went with elementary you will feed on the Ubuntu repositories, so the change to the last two distros wouldn't be so dramatic.

 

And keep in mind that Distro Hopping is kind of a productivity killer, there's no such thing as the perfect distro, there's just the ones that fit your needs and the ones that don't.

[Sychic]

51 minutes ago, Den15 said:

We probably missed the point. To someone coming from Windows, being this the first attempt at searching distros we should've seen it coming.

 

He probably wanted a middle ground between a macosx and windows, but we gotta say it @Sychic :

 

When it comes to Linux minimalism is not GUI, you probably meant "clean and sleek", and by that we could have told you: manjaro xfce (or kde if you want something more modern looking), mint, maybe even Pop!_OS (19.04) or Ubuntu (19.04). Since you went with elementary you will feed on the Ubuntu repositories, so the change to the last two distros wouldn't be so dramatic.

 

And keep in mind that Distro Hopping is kind of a productivity killer, there's no such thing as the perfect distro, there's just the ones that fit your needs and the ones that don't.

Are there any Linux distros that are more MacOSX based? I think that'd be pretty cool. And if possible, are there any that are ubuntu based?

[Dat Guy]

No single Linux distribution is based on macOS. Ubuntu mimicks some of its user interface though.

 

1 minute ago, Sychic said:

are there any that are ubuntu based?

Sure:

DistroWatch

[Sychic]

2 minutes ago, Dat Guy said:

No single Linux distribution is based on macOS. Ubuntu mimicks some of its user interface though.

 

Yeah I meant ones that looks like MacOS

[Koeshi]

If you want something that looks like MacOS then go with Elementary.  You could modify other distros and their GUIs to look similar but Elementary has the Apple look straight out of the box.

[Sychic]

23 minutes ago, Koeshi said:

If you want something that looks like MacOS then go with Elementary.  You could modify other distros and their GUIs to look similar but Elementary has the Apple look straight out of the box.

I think I might try Fedora since it seems like it also looks a lot like MacOS

[Dat Guy]

Fedora uses the GNOME desktop by default. The GNOME desktop is available for most Linux distributions and other operating systems. If you like Fedora's desktop, just install it on your chosen distribution.

 

Do not choose your distribution only because of its standard desktop!

[Sychic]

Just now, Dat Guy said:

Fedora uses the GNOME desktop by default. The GNOME desktop is available for most Linux distributions and other operating systems. If you like Fedora's desktop, just install it on your chosen distribution.

 

Do not choose your distribution only because of its standard desktop!

oh cool so gnome is like a skin for linux distros?

[Dat Guy]

No, it is much more than that. You could probably compare it to the Windows Explorer or the macOS Finder.

Everything you see "on your desktop", including the bars on the top and/or bottom, menus and even window decorations, is a part of your desktop environment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desktop_environment

 

GNOME is one of many X desktop environments, together with KDE, Xfce, LXQt and others. elementary OS's standard desktop, for example, is Pantheon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_X_Window_System_desktop_environments

 

Most of them are easily interchangeable, that's why I said you should not choose your distribution because of its standard desktop - you can get almost all desktops on almost all distributions anyway.

[Den15]

Come on OP, what do you need in your computer?

 

Do you code? Game? Content production? CAD?

 

Let us help you, my boi.

[Sychic]

5 hours ago, Den15 said:

Come on OP, what do you need in your computer?

 

Do you code? Game? Content production? CAD?

 

Let us help you, my boi.

Mostly just wanted it to look nice and simple and clean. I don't really have a entire purpose but if I had to say I wanted to do anything it would be gaming, a tiny bit of coding, and probably mostly web browsing. 

[Den15]

On 5/10/2019 at 5:40 PM, Sychic said:

Mostly just wanted it to look nice and simple and clean. I don't really have a entire purpose but if I had to say I wanted to do anything it would be gaming, a tiny bit of coding, and probably mostly web browsing. 

It's easier then.

 

Manjaro is a rolling release distro, that means you won't have to manually upgrade it when they launch a new version, and the AUR (arch user's repository if I'm correct) is amazing and well documented.

 

Ubuntu has a big user base, it's probably the one people mention the most on troubleshooting in the interwebz, and many distros are based on that: Pop!_OS (the one I'm using right now - 19.04), Lubuntu, Kubuntu, Elementary OS, so you'll benefit from it.

 

And there's Mint, which people say it's the closest to windows (what kept me away from it) and Fedora, which has a pretty active community.

 

Search on these 4 (or 8 if you count the Ubuntu based) to see what fits you the most and you're good to go.

[Sychic]

11 minutes ago, Den15 said:

It's easier then.

 

Manjaro is a rolling release distro, that means you won't have to manually upgrade it when they launch a new version, and the AUR (arch user's repository if I'm correct) is amazing and well documented.

 

Ubuntu has a big user base, it's probably the one people mention the most on troubleshooting in the interwebz, and many distros are based on that: Pop!_OS (the one I'm using right now - 19.04), Lubuntu, Kubuntu, Elementary OS, so you'll benefit from it.

 

And there's Mint, which people say it's the closest to windows (what kept me away from it) and Fedora, which has a pretty active community.

 

Search on these 4 (or 8 if you count the Ubuntu based) to see what fits you the most and you're good to go.

I'm definitely gonna try elementary OS and change the desktop environment. I had no clue that you could just change distros to look like others lol. Probably gonna go with the gnome environment

[Nettly_]

Pop!_OS for anything really
Ubuntu if you just need a computer with Linux and you do not care about software (in terms of fully working up to date)
Debian if you hate yourself
Arch if you are a person who likes to brag
An LFS system if you want to brag more than Arch users
Solus is good for anything
FINALLY: Zorin for a more Windows feel

[wasab]

On 5/9/2019 at 5:42 PM, Sauron said:

Sorry but this is just false. Arch repositories are updated very quickly following upstream, but they always follow the stable branch and the idea that Arch is prone to breaking upon updating is simply a myth nowadays.

It corrupts up my 2ndary drive after an update. (I update once a month), forcing me to always need to reformat my 2nd drive and reset my fstab. After 2nd time this happens, I quit it for good. The fact that I also need to manually hunt down all the packages I need one by one is very annoying too. 

[Sauron]

17 minutes ago, wasab said:

It corrupts up my 2ndary drive after an update. (I update once a month), forcing me to always need to reformat my 2nd drive and reset my fstab.

Care to tell me what package update could possibly corrupt your hard drive and overwrite your fstab file? This isn't normal in the slightest and a sign of a greater problem, definitely not evidence of updates breaking things - I've used Arch for almost 5 years on 5 different machines, one of which I use as storage and media server with 4 hard drives and an experimental file system (BTRFS), and I never had anything of the sort happen. It has been rock solid across the board - the few problems I've had were either minor or user error on my part.

18 minutes ago, wasab said:

The fact that I also need to manually hunt down all the packages I need one by one is very annoying too. 

What do you mean? If you're referring to the installation process, getting a graphical interface only requires installing a handful of packages outside of the base metapackage - all of which are clearly detailed on the wiki. No "hunting down" required. As for general usage, how is looking for a package in a repo with pacman -Ss any worse than apt search or what have you? In fact I'd argue it's better since you won't need to look for PPAs every time you want a package that isn't in the repos - you can just use an AUR helper.

 

Regardless this is off topic since OP was referring to minimal GUIs, which are potentially achievable on any distro and come out of the box on some which are not Arch.

On 5/13/2019 at 1:46 PM, Sychic said:

I'm definitely gonna try elementary OS and change the desktop environment. I had no clue that you could just change distros to look like others lol. Probably gonna go with the gnome environment

Gnome is definitely a possibility, just be aware it's not as easy to customize as other environments - if you think you'll want to tweak it a lot you should probably consider xfce, kde or mate.

[wasab]

39 minutes ago, Sauron said:

Care to tell me what package update could possibly corrupt your hard drive and overwrite your fstab file? This isn't normal in the slightest and a sign of a greater problem, definitely not evidence of updates breaking things - I've used Arch for almost 5 years on 5 different machines, one of which I use as storage and media server with 4 hard drives and an experimental file system (BTRFS), and I never had anything of the sort happen. It has been rock solid across the board - the few problems I've had were either minor or user error on my part.

 

fstab itself isn't the issue. In arch rescue, i simply delete my 2nd drive from fstab which allows me to boot the os normally. After on desktop, I tried mounting my 2nd drive and the partition couldn't be mounted. It reported error every time and mount ulitility simply informed me to reformat. I only keep steam games on my 2nd drive so no data loss but very annoying this happens every time. 

 

I don't know what packages I install. I simply did a pacman -Syu

[Sauron]

2 minutes ago, wasab said:

fstab itself isn't the issue. In arch rescue, i simply delete my 2nd drive from fstab which allows me to boot the os normally. After on desktop, I tried mounting my 2nd drive and the partition couldn't be mounted. It reported error every time and mount ulitility simply informed me to reformat. I only keep steam games on my 2nd drive so no data loss but very annoying this happens every time. 

 

I don't know what packages I install. I simply did a pacman -Syu

Extremely strange, this would require more investigation.

[Sychic]

3 hours ago, Sauron said:

Gnome is definitely a possibility, just be aware it's not as easy to customize as other environments - if you think you'll want to tweak it a lot you should probably consider xfce, kde or mate.

I'll definitely try those.

[Dat Guy]

4 hours ago, Sauron said:

if you think you'll want to tweak it a lot you should probably consider xfce, kde or mate.

And Enlightenment. Definitely Enlightenment. But KDE wins the customizability crown all the time.

[Shura]

Manjaro XFCE (Arch Based)

MX Linux (Debian Based)

PopOS (Ubuntu Based)

Linux Mint (Ubuntu Based)

 

I would recommend in that order, For Manjaro just install a backup kernal incase you break it during an update. Though if you do regular updates, you shouldn't have any issues.