The Candidate Distro List

About this list

Three key points for a candidate distribution:

easy to use
large hardware profile
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

The Top Five

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.

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

}

Distro Parent:

Ubuntu/Debian

Minimum System Requirements:

Recommended 1GHz 512MB RAM

from wikipedia

Package Manager:

Release Cycles (if applicable):

Mint 12 and 9 supported until April 2013
Mint Debian: rolling distribution

from mint website

Standard Desktop Environment:

Documentation (links to wikis, forums, etc):

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.

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.

Hardware: from either the official or community wiki docs, there are sections about hardware support, but I had a difficult time and found little useful information.

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)

}

Distro Parent:

Debian

Minimum System Requirements:

Package Manager:

Release Cycles (if applicable):

Standard Desktop Environment:

Documentation (links to wikis, forums, etc):

Debian

http://debian.org

Info for refining distro selection: {

release cycle:

Debian has three branches (stable, unstable, experimental) and do not have a set release cycle. Recent releases have occurred slightly under once every two years.

The current testing branch, wheezy, has a freeze scheduled for end of June 2012, and a release is feasible by the end of 2012.

Security support on the old stable release is maintained for 1 additional year beyond the current stable release.

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: Release Cycles (if applicable): Standard Desktop Environment: Documentation (links to wikis, forums, etc):

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.

Fedora

Distro Parent: RedHat

Minimum System Requirements:

10GB drive space
1G RAM
400MHz Pentium Pro or later (Also works on AMD, Cyrix and VIA

Package Manager: Yum

Release cycle: every 6 months. Last release (fedora 16) was on 11/08/2011

Standard Desktop environment: Gnome Nisha: Actually during installation of Fedora 16, Gnome 3 gets natively installed. However, most probably the graphics cards or drivers that we would use would not support Gnome 3 so it will fail install and go to a "fallback" mode. At this point the CD goes live. We could probably get this to not happen during installation.

Documentation:

Comments: Nisha:

Some trouble installing it but did manage to install it. It comes with a minimal amount of extra software installed but comes with yum to install other packages as needed. From experience I know that it is not straightforward but I think it is customizable to our requirements if we write a script to make changes and install packages. For example, a user cannot use sudo unless they add their user name to the wheel group.

Nisha: By default, SELinux is enabled which might be irritating to users. All the usual apps that you would expect to see are there under the Applications section. That means it's still difficult to find the software that you had just installed :P

OpenSuSe

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

http://www.opensuse.org/

Distro Parent:

Minimum System Requirements:

Package Manager:

Release Cycles (if applicable):

( Supported by Novell. )

Standard Desktop Environment:

Documentation (links to wikis, forums, etc):

Comments: zed:

updated: 01/06/11

+: Install is very customizable and works with multiple monitor setups. Networking, sound and many other options can be configured at the time of installation. Gives the option to install either Gnome, KDE and few lesser known GUIs on installation. Most features work out of the box.

-: Software Package Management system not as easy to use as other distros. A few minor glitches on the GUI. Website can be difficult to navigate for help.

(rest of) The List

Arch

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

http://www.archlinux.org/

Distro Parent:

Minimum System Requirements:

(not listed)

Package Manager:

Release Cycles (if applicable):

Rolling

Standard Desktop Environment:

Documentation (links to wikis, forums, etc):

Comments:

John:

For advanced users familiar with the CLI and the layout of their system. Installation is robust and ncurses based; user must make many specific choices. Also, once installed, boots to CLI first, no GUI installed by default, must install and start x manually. research from arch website

CentOS

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

http://www.centos.org/

Distro Parent:

Minimum System Requirements:

Minimum v5 - 256MB Ram
Minimum v6 - 512MB Ram

Package Manager:

Release Cycles (if applicable):

Version 5 - until March 2014
Version 6 - until November 2017

from centOS FAQ

Standard Desktop Environment:

Documentation (links to wikis, forums, etc):

PCLinuxOS

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

http://www.pclinuxos.com/

Distro Parent:

Minimum System Requirements:

Package Manager:

Release Cycles (if applicable):

Standard Desktop Environment:

Documentation (links to wikis, forums, etc):

Puppy

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

http://www.puppylinux.com/

Support Cycle:

Wary and Racy puppy are both LTS (duration not stated)

System Reqs:

(not listed) though Puppy is intended NOT TO BE INSTALLED TO HD
it is intended to run off of a LiveCD AND the process to install to HD is long and obscure

Comments JP:

website is hard to follow
not much community support

Mageia

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

http://www.mageia.org/

Support Cycle:

(UNDECIDED)
Mageia is a Mandriva fork that is 9 months old (brand new)

System Reqs:

512MB RAM min - 2GB recommended
6GB HD for full install

Mandriva

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

http://www.mandriva.com/

Support Cycle:

Mandriva 2011 end support cycle is undecided, but will be after Dec 2012

System Reqs:

Mandriva 2011 Reqs. min 1GB Ram

Lubuntu

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

http://lubuntu.net/

Support Cycle:

11.10 will be supported until April 2013. It is the first official release as part of the Ubuntu cycle.

System Reqs:

A Pentium II or Celeron system with 128 MB of RAM is probably a bottom-line configuration that may yield slow yet usable system with Lubuntu. It should be possible to install and run Lubuntu with less memory, but the result will likely not be suitable for practical use. from lubuntu website