Candidate Distro List

The Candidate Distro List

About this list

Three key points for a candidate distribution:

1. easy to use
2. large hardware profile
3. acessibility

Note from Paul:

• Big five (Debian, Fedora, Mint, OpenSuSE, Ubuntu), and interesting others
•  List needs to be small and shrink

Standardized info for each distro:

• Distro Parent: (e.g., RedHat, Debian, etc)
• Minimum System Requirements:
• Package Manager:
• Release Cycles (if applicable):
• Standard Desktop Environment:
• Documentation (links to wikis, forums, etc):

(kudos to Sean for the headway!)

Suggestions for commenting:

• Think about the Key Points listed above (ease of use, supported hardware, accessibility)
• Does stuff work out-of-the-box? (networking, video, sound, laptop devices, keyboard map, mounting external media)
• Does it provide easy utilities for configuring the system?
• How easy is the package manager to use?
• Is the Desktop Environment clean/nice/easy/useful?
• It may not be so useful to talk about ease of install (this can be automated)

Useful Links

http://tuxradar.com/content/best-distro-2011

Mint

http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=mint

http://linuxmint.com/

Info for refining distro selection: {

release cycle: this info comes from http://www.linuxmint.com/faq.php and it is the only place on the official website that I saw this info listed:

Is Linux Mint suitable for companies? Yes. Although Linux Mint release new versions every 6 months, each release is supported for a year and a half. We also make periodic Long-Term Support (LTS) releases which are supported for a duration of 3 years and which are guaranteed to provide enough overlap to allow you to upgrade from one LTS release to the next.

Linux Mint 13 is an LTS release, supported until April 2017. Standard releases are on a 6-month schedule.

maintainability(stability, community support for distro etc.):

Mint has a quality idea/feedback system at http://community.Linuxmint.com/ that uses roughly a ticket based system for advancing new ideas, rating them, and marking them as rejected or accepted. This is different than their bug tracking, which is handled through launchpad, and from the forums in general I gathered that fixes go upstream to ubuntu.

Documentation is unfortunately almost non-existent (the word 'documentation' does not appear on their website) but there are a series of tutorials on a wide variety of topics that are not necessarily related to mint that can be found at http://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/search

Hardware support information: there is an extensibly searchable supported hardware catalog that can be found at http://community.linuxmint.com/hardware check out the Type: 'Wifi car/adapter/dongle' (long list) page for an example

}

General Info

Distro Parent:

Ubuntu/Debian

Minimum System Requirements:

• x86 processor (Linux Mint 64-bit requires a 64-bit processor. Linux Mint 32-bit works on both 32-bit and 64-bit processors).
• 512 MB RAM (1GB recommended for a comfortable usage).
• 5 GB of disk space
• Graphics card capable of 800×600 resolution
• CD/DVD drive or USB port

Standard Desktop Environment:

Package Manager:

• apt core with custom front-end

Release Cycles (if applicable):

• Mint 12 and 9 supported until April 2013
• Mint 13 LTS supported until 2017
• Mint Debian: rolling distribution

from mint website

Comments:

John:

• Mint 12 is based on ubuntu with a gnome environment. I installed and after a splash page comes up on the desktop that prompts you to download media and dvd codecs among other things like links to tutorials and other pages on the community website
• Mint website says Mint Debian is neat because it is auto-updating - you never have to upgrade versions. but it is also therefore more unstable. It also reqs knowledge of the command line to enable one-touch-click on laptops and other similar things. They also says it is like ubuntu but rough around the edges.

Available User Documentation

Generic Manuals (web pages with troubleshooting info):

Forums:

Wikis:

Other Notes:

Ubuntu

http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=ubuntu

http://www.ubuntu.com/

Info for refining distro selection:  {

release cycle: from http://www.ubuntu.com/project/about-ubuntu

The Ubuntu team broke new ground in committing to a programme of scheduled releases on a predictable six-month basis. It was decided that every fourth release, issued on a two-year basis, would receive long-term support (LTS). LTS releases are typically used for large-scale deployments.

maintainability(stability, community support for distro etc.):

Documentation seems unfortunately bloated and confusing; each page has many more pages linked, and it is difficult to find specific info.  Official Documentation for 12.04 is four clicks in from main site in a difficult to navigat manner, and can be found at https://help.ubuntu.com/12.04/ubuntu-help/index.html. This is distinct from the 'community wiki' documentation, which is also hard to navigate, somewhat redundant with the official docs.

There are many many ubuntu local chapters, but this user has been involved with our Oregon branch, and while I have met people who have worked with fg, I have not really met any fg end-users at the meetings (posted ~06/12)

}

Hardware Support:

(1) How much support for wide-scale installations and customizations? A number of government agencies and schools have issued large-scale deployments of Ubuntu. The Business Desktop remix, for instance, is recommended for large-scale enterprise deployments.

From Ubuntu's website: Deployments can be supported through a standard Ubuntu Advantage agreement from Canonical, or unpaid. Management of large scale desktop deployments, either of this remix or standard Ubuntu, is best achieved with Canonical’s Landscape management tool. (http://www.ubuntu.com/business/desktop/remix)

OEM installation capabilities are built-in.

(2) How many of our machines did it install successfully on? All laptops but Leia (Ubuntu wouldn't install due to missing PAE extension). Default Ubuntu installers don't install on non-PAE machines, but Ben is trying a workaround with mini.iso.

Most, possibly all, desktop installations were successful. We had good results with autodetection of hardware after moving hard drives between boxes.

(3) Are there any known hardware incompatibilities? Some computer models are considered Certified for Ubuntu, including certain makes of Dell, HP, Lenovo, Asus, and others.

A new-ish hardware compatibility list is maintained at https://friendly.ubuntu.com/ (beta site). Several Acer, ASUS, Dell, HP, Lenovo, and Toshiba models are given 1-star ratings, which indicates compatibility problems.

The Ubuntu Forums also have stickies on laptop incompatibility (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1543009) and desktop incompatibility (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=361237).

In our testing, we found that the standard Ubuntu installer would not work on a machine without a PAE extension.

(4) Are there a lot of reports of hardware bugs? We had several problems with laptops and external VGA, including lagging and general bugginess.

On Ubuntu Forums I noted quite a few complaints about suspend/hibernate/resume, lack of sound, volume controls not working, bluetooth, overheating, older graphics cards not working. One post noted "known problems with the proprietary driver for the ATI/AMD Radeon HD 6700M series video card" (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1543009).

(5) How well did it perform on the lower spec machines? Performed well overall, albeit Unity can be a bit laggy.

(6) What are the minimum and recommended hardware specs and how well do they fit to our current specs? Minimum RAM required: 384 MB (This is the only thing specified for 12.04 on the Ubuntu wiki)

General Info

Distro Parent:

Debian

Minimum System Requirements:

Standard Desktop Environment:

Package Manager:

Release Cycles (if applicable):

Available User Documentation

Generic Manuals (web pages with troubleshooting info):

Forums:

Wikis:

Other Notes:

Xubuntu

http://xubuntu.org/

Screenshot of Xfce configured to look like Gnome 2 (as in Ubuntu 10.04)

Media:Xfce_Lucid_config.png

Info for refining distro selection: {

release cycle:

maintainability(stability, community support for distro etc.):

}

Hardware Support:

(1) How much support for wide-scale installations and customizations? A number of government agencies and schools have issued large-scale deployments of Ubuntu. The Business Desktop remix, for instance, is recommended for large-scale enterprise deployments.

From Ubuntu's website: Deployments can be supported through a standard Ubuntu Advantage agreement from Canonical, or unpaid. Management of large scale desktop deployments, either of this remix or standard Ubuntu, is best achieved with Canonical’s Landscape management tool. (http://www.ubuntu.com/business/desktop/remix)

OEM installation capabilities are built-in.

(2) How many of our machines did it install successfully on? All laptops but Leia (Ubuntu wouldn't install due to missing PAE extension). Default Ubuntu installers don't install on non-PAE machines, but Ben is trying a workaround with mini.iso.

Most, possibly all, desktop installations were successful. We had good results with autodetection of hardware after moving hard drives between boxes.

(3) Are there any known hardware incompatibilities? Some computer models are considered Certified for Ubuntu, including certain makes of Dell, HP, Lenovo, Asus, and others.

A new-ish hardware compatibility list is maintained at https://friendly.ubuntu.com/ (beta site). Several Acer, ASUS, Dell, HP, Lenovo, and Toshiba models are given 1-star ratings, which indicates compatibility problems.

The Ubuntu Forums also have stickies on laptop incompatibility (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1543009) and desktop incompatibility (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=361237).

In our testing, we found that the standard Ubuntu installer would not work on a machine without a PAE extension.

(4) Are there a lot of reports of hardware bugs? We had several problems with laptops and external VGA, including lagging and general bugginess.

On Ubuntu Forums I noted quite a few complaints about suspend/hibernate/resume, lack of sound, volume controls not working, bluetooth, overheating, older graphics cards not working. One post noted "known problems with the proprietary driver for the ATI/AMD Radeon HD 6700M series video card" (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1543009).

(5) How well did it perform on the lower spec machines? Performed well overall, albeit Unity can be a bit laggy.

(6) What are the minimum and recommended hardware specs and how well do they fit to our current specs? Minimum RAM required: 384 MB (This is the only thing specified for 12.04 on the Ubuntu wiki)

General Info

Distro Parent:

Debian

Minimum System Requirements:

Standard Desktop Environment:

Package Manager:

Release Cycles (if applicable):

Available User Documentation

Generic Manuals (web pages with troubleshooting info):

Forums:

Wikis:

Other Notes:

Debian

http://debian.org

Info for refining distro selection:  {

Release Cycles:

Debian has three branches (stable, unstable, experimental). The development freeze cycle was announced to be 2 years, but this announcement was retracted. In general, though, the release cycle has been about 2 years.

The current stable branch is Debian 6.0 (Squeeze). The current testing branch, 7.0 (Wheezy), is under freeze as of June 30, 2012, and a release is feasible by the end of 2012.

The Debian security team releases security updates for the latest stable major release, and for the prior stable release for one year. Security support on the old stable release (currently Debian 5.0/Lenny) is maintained for 1 additional year beyond the current stable release (6.0/Squeeze).

Testing is more conservative than testing for Ubuntu. Stable releases are VERY stable, while the testing branch is inherently unstable. Debian, like Ubuntu, has bug-squashing parties. http://www.wikivs.com/wiki/Debian_vs_Ubuntu#Debian_Testing

Hardware Support: Wireless networking didn't work out-of-the-box on several of our laptops. There were also a few problems with connecting to external VGA.

Minimum hardware requirements: Install Type RAM (minimal) RAM (recommended) Hard Drive

No desktop 64 megabytes 256 megabytes 1 gigabyte

With Desktop 128 megabytes 512 megabytes 5 gigabytes

Support Issues: There is a lot of information about Debian available on the Debian Wiki (http://wiki.debian.org), but it isn't the most user-friendly. The forums (http://forums.debian.net) are reasonably populated but less active than Ubuntu and Mint forums.

Software Availability:

Maintainability (stability, community support for distro, etc.):

Stability: In this users experience (John Parker), Debian 6.0 incredibly stable and is at least twice as stable in frequency of errors/conflicts compared to ubuntu, but sometimes it has been difficult setting processes up for the first time (wireless for example)

Documentation: http://www.debian.org/doc/ There are many manuals, howtos, faqs, and guides, but it seems that you have to know what section you are looking for more than what problem you are having.

Community: There is a large developer community, but it may be difficult to approach from and end-user standpoint, though Debian goes to great lengths to allow it's users to feel encouraged to troubleshoot their own issues.

}

Distro Parent: None

Minimum System Requirements:

Package Manager: dpkg

Release Cycles (if applicable):

Standard Desktop Environment: GNOME 3

Documentation (links to wikis, forums, etc): http://wiki.debian.org, http://www.debian.org/doc/

Support Cycle:

• 1 year past previous release, new release approximately every 2 years.
• freeze for next release(wheezy), June 2012, release hopefully by end of 2012.