[OT] Good or best Linux distro?

[H. S. Teoh]

On Fri, Jan 24, 2014 at 06:01:33AM -0500, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
[...]
> While Linux isn't my primary desktop system, the desktop Linux stuff
> I do work with has gone from Ubuntu -> Debian -> Mint.
> 
> I left Ubuntu because Canonical was starting to piss me off, partly
> because of their apparent obsession with being basically just an OSX
> clone. So I went upstream to Debian. Still run Debian on my server,
> but I abandoned it as a desktop OS partly because so much of it is
> out of date literally before they even release it, and also because
> once they do get a newer version of something, there's a fair chance
> you can't actually get it without upgrading the whole OS because not
> everything actually gets into backports
[...]

You should just run off Debian/unstable (or if you're chicken, testing).
I do.  In spite of the name, it's actually already as stable as your
typical desktop OS with its typical occasional random breakage. Stable
is really for those people who are running mission critical servers that
when the OS dies, people die. That's why it's always "out of date", 'cos
everything must be tested thoroughly first. For desktop users you don't
need that kind of stability, and generally you don't want to wait that
long to get software upgrades. So just use unstable or testing. I've
been living off unstable for almost 15 years and have only had 1 or 2
occasions when things broke in a major way. That's saying a lot
considering how many times I've had to reformat and reinstall Windows
(supposedly a stable release version!) back when I was still stuck using
it.


T

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