[OT] Good or best Linux distro?

[Chris]

On Monday, 20 January 2014 at 23:38:39 UTC, Moritz Maxeiner wrote:
> On Monday, 20 January 2014 at 22:39:53 UTC, Chris wrote:
>> I managed to install Arch Linux with Manjaro. I could install 
>> dub and dmd without any problems. The installation of Manjaro 
>> failed in UEFI mode, although it said it had been successful, 
>> it didn't work. I reinstalled it in classic mode with the 
>> stable installer and now it works. Now I'm testing it. So far 
>> everything works out of the box (wifi etc.) (unlike Ubuntu 
>> that gave me an effin headache).
>>
>> I still believe that UEFI is just another trick to scare 
>> people away from Linux.
>
> Have you tried setting up UEFI manually 
> (https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GRUB#UEFI_systems_2) ? 
> Since Manjaro is Arch-based the  wiki should mostly still 
> apply. I have setup UEFI with Arch on several systems so far 
> without any issues, but as the page states, different 
> manufacturers implement UEFI differently. If you run into any 
> UEFI issues, you might want to report them, so they can be 
> fixed / others can avoid that hardware if the need working UEFI.

I tried the test installer provided by Manjaro. The standard 
installer doesn't support UEFI (yet). The installer said 
everything had been set up (efi partition etc.), but the 
installation failed somehow. I was lazy and didn't partition 
manually but used the auto-partitioning option.
(cf. http://wiki.manjaro.org/index.php?title=UEFI_-_Install_Guide)

Then I just changed to legacy mode and installed with the stable 
installer. It's working now. I'd like to give UEFI another go, 
but there's always some issue. Ubuntu can handle it 
automatically, though.

> Further off topic: SecureBoot might be a trick to scare people 
> away from Linux, but UEFI? It brings direct boot into 64 bit 
> long mode (making a lot of initialisation assembly code 
> obsolete) and if you want, you can even get rid of a normal 
> bootloader and directly boot up a kernel (efistub). While it is 
> true that several manufacturers seem to implement it in a way 
> that complicates / causes issues for Linux and it certainly 
> could be made better / more implementations of it 
> standard-compliant, I think UEFI is still a step up from BIOS.

True, true. But I have a feeling that standardization / 
simplification is not really a priority, because it makes the 
installation of linux systems nigh impossible for normal users 
who are not tech savvy. MS sure won't complain about this 
situation ;)