What linus distro should I use?

[Jplayz]

Hello everyone! I am coming here to get some help picking out a linux distro for my chromebook, an HP Chromebook 11 G5, with 4 GB RAM. I would preferably like this distro to use GNOME, I will deal with a bit worse of an experience for it to look a tons better. Essentially, I need one that will fit under 15GB of storage. I'm currently using Zorin OS Core, and it runs OK, but was wondering if there were better options out there?

Any help will be appreciated!

[manikyath]

i'm not a gnome person AT ALL, but that's nothing distrowatch cant fix..

- Pop! OS

- Fedora

are probably the two most noteworthy.

Pop! OS is an ubuntu derivative (so, an ecosystem with LOTS of documentation floating around), and is backed by System76, who are in the business of selling linux computers.

Fedora is a 'community' distro based on red hat, who are probably the microsoft of the linux world.

[whispous]

57 minutes ago, Jplayz said:

Hello everyone! I am coming here to get some help picking out a linux distro for my chromebook, an HP Chromebook 11 G5, with 4 GB RAM. I would preferably like this distro to use GNOME, I will deal with a bit worse of an experience for it to look a tons better. Essentially, I need one that will fit under 15GB of storage. I'm currently using Zorin OS Core, and it runs OK, but was wondering if there were better options out there?

Any help will be appreciated!

I like to use Mint, as it is based on Ubuntu, but the Gnome desktop environment feels snappier and more useful. It's not overly heavy, and is widely adopted, making tutorials much more likely to work!

[maplepants]

I put GalliumOS on my Chromebook. Yours should be supported, so that's what I would do.

[peotr26]

2 hours ago, maplepants said:

I put GalliumOS on my Chromebook. Yours should be supported, so that's what I would do.

I would not recommend Gallium OS as it has not received any major updates since 2019 and the project doesn't seem to have been updated since 2021 on GitHub. But if you don't consider accessing the Internet, it could be a good option.

[Jplayz]

7 hours ago, peotr26 said:

I would not recommend Gallium OS as it has not received any major updates since 2019 and the project doesn't seem to have been updated since 2021 on GitHub. But if you don't consider accessing the Internet, it could be a good option.

Thanks for the suggestion, I'm going to give Zorin Core a try and see how it goes, I am still open to suggestions if there is a better one out there

[maplepants]

14 hours ago, peotr26 said:

I would not recommend Gallium OS as it has not received any major updates since 2019 and the project doesn't seem to have been updated since 2021 on GitHub. But if you don't consider accessing the Internet, it could be a good option.

You're right! Damn, I should have spotted that. It's been a while since I had a Chromebook and didn't know the project had died. Too bad, since this kind of native hardware support is really key to getting good battery life.

[Needfuldoer]

I'll recommend Ubuntu MATE because GNOME 2 is still the Linux desktop environment I hate the least think is the easiest to use.

[Luis Javier]

with that amount of storage(15gb) I would recommend you to use btrfs with compression, if you dont know how to set it up fedora does this by default and it already has gnome.

[Jplayz]

6 minutes ago, Luis Javier said:

with that amount of storage(15gb) I would recommend you to use btrfs with compression, if you dont know how to set it up fedora does this by default and it already has gnome.

Where would I go about finding that, sorry Im new to linux

[undergroundbeef]

I'm on a micro pc with 8GB or RAM with a 2GHz Celeron.... slightly faster than the Chromebook you're talking about (from what I could find). I installed Fedora with Gnome and it worked... I guess, but the experience wasn't great. I ended up experimenting with some different desktops and ended up landing on XFCE. With some customization, it still looks pretty decent, and it feels much faster. With Gnome I didn't feel like I could have much open at the same time.

 

The nice thing is you can pick a base OS and install a couple different desktops and switch back and forth to see what trade offs you are willing to make. That will come at the expense of some drive space, but once you figure out what you want you can clean things up.

[Luis Javier]

11 hours ago, Jplayz said:

Where would I go about finding that, sorry Im new to linux

this article explains it https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/BtrfsTransparentCompression. However keep in mind that you can enable it on any linux distro (not just in fedora)with btrfs by just editing the fstab (its a configuration file for the mount options)

[Guidosaurus-Rex]

On 1/29/2023 at 3:35 PM, Jplayz said:

Hello everyone! I am coming here to get some help picking out a linux distro for my chromebook, an HP Chromebook 11 G5, with 4 GB RAM. I would preferably like this distro to use GNOME, I will deal with a bit worse of an experience for it to look a tons better. Essentially, I need one that will fit under 15GB of storage. I'm currently using Zorin OS Core, and it runs OK, but was wondering if there were better options out there?

Any help will be appreciated!

Pop_OS is a great choice.   Ubuntu/Debian based so there's a lot of documentation if you need guides/help.  Make sure you download the ISO for Nvidia gpus. 

Mint is also a great choice.  Similar to Pop_OS.  Ubuntu/Debian based so a lot of the documentation for Ubuntu/Debian will apply.

Fedora is also really good.  It's not Ubuntu or Debian based so trying to use apt-get/apt will not work.  Nice and reliable.  

[The Hope]

On 2/4/2023 at 4:41 AM, Jplayz said:

sorry Im new to linux

You can also test helloSystem/GhostBSD/FreeBSD instead of Linux on that hardware.

 

I can tell you my impressions with pulseaudio on Linux, I have used Linux for a long time on five different laptops/netbooks/desktops. A first impression I have is that the audio quality differs on Linux depending on which app and what type of connection you use (analog/HDMI/SPDIF etc.) I found the audio on Clear Linux terrible out-of- the-box on the analog (green) connection of my PC. With Ubuntu on other hardware I did an experiment with Quod Libet. You can easily get bitperfect sound through the settings of this audio player. I then compared this sound in bitperfect mode with FreeBSD's sound in bitperfect mode on the same hardware. And the sound sounded distorted on Ubuntu, quite noticeably distorted I mean. Other people could also hear this so it's not my imagination. On Arch Linux I found the audio better than on Ubuntu and Clear Linux, but not on the same level as FreeBSD either. I've used Arch Linux for a long time on several different types of hardware. In the end there is only one Linux setup where I managed to get decent sound out of Linux. This was a laptop with Fedora that I connected to the TV with HDMI, but I used an HDMI splitter that also had a SPDIF output to the 5.1 DTS Sony amp in combination with fancy Infinity speakers. Then in mpv media player I used the SPDIF passthrough option, and when I played movies that had DTS sound the sound was really impressive. But this is the only setup out of many different setups that accidentally delivered decent sound in Linux. So the overall picture is really not good, and I think windows usually has better audio than Linux.

 

It may be that Linux's audio is 'good enough' for you personally. But based on many other sources I can say it's not on par with FreeBSD's sound.
Why do people dislike PulseAudio?

Why is audio still so awful on linux?

So fast forward to 2007, when PulseAudio is actually unleashed upon the computers of everyone else except Lennart and his friends as it's adopted and enabled by default in Fedora 8. To put it mildly, nothing worked anymore. Very literally -- when we installed it at the crufty place where I held a part-time job there, it broke sound on every single one of the 10-15 different configurations we had, from laptops to desktops.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13381345
Why OSS sound quality is superior vs ALSA
http://ossnext.trueinstruments.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5811
OSS
https://linuxreviews.org/OSS
Open Sound System (OSS4) superior to ALSA
https://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=95824.0

[HeroRareheart]

On 2/3/2023 at 10:34 PM, Luis Javier said:

with that amount of storage(15gb) I would recommend you to use btrfs with compression, if you dont know how to set it up fedora does this by default and it already has gnome.

I've also found that Fedora tends to have a smaller footprint once installed so it's much more suitable for devices that have limited storage space.

[gRaN-Ma project]

 

I found this video on YouTube. Probably by commenting on the aforementioned video, you may receive advice from the related channel owner. 

 

[tkitch]

Hannah Montana Linux

 

[wasab]

ubuntu. follow the crowd, nothing wrong with that. heck, you will be much better off in doing so since crowds get a lot more attention and help than the people who does black magic hackery on distrocs few knows about.