Linux is looking better every day.

[Audioaficionado]

Mint Linux (Ubuntu), Mint Linux Debian Edition and Manjaro (Arch) look the best so far. Stable older LTS or well tested bleeding edge. Maybe divi up an SSD and install both.

 

[Audioaficionado]

Unix is also interesting but not as easy. True OS is interesting, but you'll be responsible to bolt on your own desktop environment. Then there's the Hackintosh version of Unix.

 

[Robert17]

I found that Ubuntu Mint Linux worked well for me. Don't game much so it was a non-issue from that standpoint. But trying to integrate contact lists with available email clients and bolting on seamlessly, well, I couldn't make it work. Otherwise it's well developed for most uses, lots of programs available.

 

[knoober]

I've never really been a fan of Mint, but I haven't really looked at any besides the standard Mint (never heard of Ubuntu Mint or the Debian edition). There is just something indefinable about it that makes me want to look elsewhere. I feel the same about vanilla Ubuntu. It just seems like nearly every option has the same feature set and then some. With that said: I expect anything with Debian in the name to be ultra stable and anything Mint to be built with a user friendly nature. Both probably boast a fair sized community that can help with any issues that do arise. So if that's what you like those are likely good choices.

If you appreciate a little slimmer/less bloated system (and I do ), then Arch flavors are going make you a little happier, but at the cost of a little stability. Antergos and Manjaro are absolutely not unstable, not is pure Arch, but updates are frequent and while the community is helpful, there is an expectation to help yourself that can be tough for beginners like myself. If you have the time to invest in learning how to administrate your system properly though, IMO you will have a ball with any Arch derivative. The wiki *is* as good as the hype. If Windows had such decent explanations/instructions as the Arch Wiki gives I might have stayed a little longer.

 

[caddi daddi]

I use zorin os for day in, day out use, it's ubuntu with another face.
I install my operating systems on their own drives with all other drives detached so it's true dual boot and no grub to deal with at boot time.
for fast, very light weight system I use puppy os.

 

[Audioaficionado]

Most PCs have the boot menu option to choose any bootable devices.

BTW, RIP Antergos Linux

 

[caddi daddi]

yes, and that is what I use, grub seems to like to take over that function.

 

[knoober]

That is kind of sad news about antergos. I just installed it a day before the announcement and hasn't heard yet. It's doesn't seem like there was a load of secret sauce anyway. Seems to be a graphical installer that does some of the heavy lifting for you as opposed to a pure arch install. I will say that the way they took care of the eye candy and just generally implemented the 'quality of life' tweaks will be missed.

For instance : I did a pure arch install on my laptop then installed my DE of choice. DE came without a wifi manager so I had to connect to a wired line to get one and configure it. Antergos already took care of all that. Same OS, same DE, less hassle. I can only imagine that there is many similar things that the antergos guys implemented. There is a postinstall script that I have read about that might be worth snagging while it still exists. Seems like it just runs through and dots i's and crosses t's

Also there is the Reborn OS project that is kind of a fork of antergos. Their last iso (about a month ago) still had bugs in the installer, but I like what they are trying to do and plan to check back with them to see if they fix the bugs

 

[habbajabba]

Per WSUS's latest gui, MS will end support officially for 'legacy' windows 7 among other versions as of Jan 14th 2020. So the choice is either be forced to swallow win10 and it's bs or simply run a free version of Linux. Doesn't seem to be a hard choice at all other than which flavor of linux would you like. I have already confirmed linux loves my tablet and hardware so kicking winblows to the curb will be a relief more than anything. Too bad bout antergos. It was at the top of the list, literally lol. Also considering atm debian, manjaro, mx, kde neon, whatever flips the pancakes.

 

[Audioaficionado]

I grabbed the live iso while it's still up. I figure I could us it to install ARCH the easier way. They say that eventually they will turn off the Antergos repos and just feed from the Arch repos. Eventually you will end up with pure Arch. There's still Manjaro for easy more stable Arch.

 

[habbajabba]

One of my favorite sites is distrowatch which lists MX as being updated today to 18.3. Debian stable and xfce - good stuff. Doesn't ship with chrome and has a liveusb (antiX) version with easy snapshotting features. Plus it lists DeaDBeeF as an alternative player to vlc. Deadbeef is like foobar without all the plugins. I miss it. MX will be my first choice atm for sure. It supports flatpacks installs from the repo, and conky is built in and super easy to configure so you can have a rainmeter like experience without all the configuring hassles. Oh yeah and now root, home, and swap are encrypted with luks too. Win10 is much easier of course. You can just login with your cell # lmao.
I am rather tired of keeping track of the multitudes of software that winblows runs. With linux I will be able to delete all those files which just take up space and waste my time and use the built-in repository gui instead. Much simpler and cleaner.

 

[Audioaficionado]

I'm thinking of getting another 500GB SSD and putting two distros on it.

 

[knoober]

Conky has really become my white whale and is a constant reminder to be grateful for Rainmeter. Even the Conky gui (can't remember what it is called off the top of my head) doesn't help a whole lot. I keep plugging away at it though because I'm sure I'll get it someday and be able to make awesome widgets. Till then I just have a boring desktop

I've got a handle on what distro is good for what tasks now and don't really go adventuring into others unless it "specializes" in a feature I have trouble with or want to get absolutely right. Ubuntu Studio for example "specializes" in audio and video and cones loaded with tons of tools. Sometimes half the work is just knowing what tools to use for the job

 

[Audioaficionado]

I wonder if I can move my winten SSD installation over to a 64GB USB3 thumb drive to free up the SSD for Linux now that I have a USB 3.1 gen 2 PCIe 4x card installed?

 

[knoober]

I wonder if I can move my winten SSD installation over to a 64GB USB3 thumb drive to free up the SSD for Linux now that I have a USB 3.1 gen 2 PCIe 4x card installed?

Windows may not allow a direct clone because... Security? Yeah I think that was the answer I found when I tried something similar (windows wouldn't boot over USB/sata adapter). Your best bet will probably be to fresh install onto the USB and migrate your data.

While I have never used USB 3.1 for this I have done USB 2.0 and 3.0. USB 2.0 felt like running on a single core with low ram, and 3.0 felt a little better but still only serviceable for emergencies. I would be curious to know how 3.1 does. What you have to remember is that there is a difference between a Live ISO on a USB stick and installing Windows on USB. They just function differently.

There are alternatives though :

1) consider a PE environment for your Windows use. Can be installed on USB and is lightweight enough to offset how clunky windows can be. Really depends on what want Windows for, because not all services are loaded/installed in a PE environment

2)you can install any distro to USB and have much better results and a pretty usable system. Just point the installer at your USB stick instead of your SSD

 

[wagex]

be cautious using a thumb drive for something like that if you use it often it will use up the write cycles on the thumb drive pretty fast eventually it wont work anymore

 

[Audioaficionado]

Anything on a thumb drive would be for occasional use. It might be better if I just used a winten VM. I had 4 VMs I built from win7 keys, but they got lost when my SSD died sooner than expected.

 

[habbajabba]

Wikipedia has a list of distros that run completely off ram. Windows would be the flashdrive that crashed and burned.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux_distributions_that_run_from_RAM
In reality any persistently bootable linux iso should be fine as long as you back the image up. I mean if the ONLY image IS the flashdrive, god help you if you lose it.
USB Image Tool works well to make and restore img's to device.

 

[Audioaficionado]

The guy on 'Switching to Linux' YouTube channel does his banking on bootable encrypted linux images on thumb drives. They will boot off a PC that has no drives to keep any data. Runs off RAM.

 

[ihrsetrdr]

Unix is also interesting but not as easy. True OS is interesting, but you'll be responsible to bolt on your own desktop environment. Then there's the Hackintosh version of Unix.

I particularly like OpenBSD, adding a desktop environment only takes adding a few packages and editing several files.

View attachment Install-MATE-openBSD.odt