First of all thanks to Tom for all the great videos. I’ve learned so much. I started my pfsense journey almost a year ago and its been a really interesting process. So far no major issues except for once when I had to admit to my wife that I broke the internet.
I’m looking to learn FreeNAS and Linux as my next projects.
Looking at all of the LTS videos, Tom references several different version of linux - POS OS!, Ubuntu, Debian, KDE Neon - I’m wondering what it is we are seeing when we see screenshots of his laptop? I guess I just want to follow in his footsteps with whatever distro he is using.
Welcome! The selection of a distro is a matter of personal taste. I experimented with various distros in VM on Windows before deciding on Kubuntu. I’m partial to KDE and I like the stability and community support that Ubuntu has. Something else may appeal to you. Experiment!
Look for stability packages release schedules patching. Right now I am using Linux Mint Mate as my main desktop like the UI. Also like Elementary stable and light weight. For the more paranoid there is Qubes based on Xen. Special use cases Kali, Tails and Tens these are good for field work on laptops. If you happen to have a netbook there is a distro from Peach that picked up the Ubuntu Netbook edition when they dropped it. Server Ubuniu but am considering a switch to Debian.
For desktop OS, Start with Ubuntu and fork your way to a happy or for something really full of customization spin up KDE Neon. For Linux servers, I like pure Debian but I keep them behind BSD (pfsense) and backed up on BSD (FreeNAS) and running virtually on CentOS (XCP-NG). Open Source is a diverse and fun ecosystem of operating systems.
That’s how I ended up with Mint as my EDC, I liked the UI on mint menus that make sense,hate the screen clutter of icons I read works not glyph s. Linux is after all about choice.
I appear to be a bit of an odd duck. I like the Arch based distributions as my desktop system and CentOS as my server system. I have played with Fedora a couple of times for the desktop but I just keep going back to Arch. Lately it’s been Manjaro. Just something about it that I like.
Each to their own, find what suits you and go for it. Learn. Have fun!
its mostly due to taste I would say, but most things are based on the same thing like debian or red hat, for myself I currently run Ubuntu, learning BSD so i can keep up to things, and given that ubuntu is based on debian i have not much problem if i drop down to debian in server work.
I switched over to Linux as my full time desktop at home about 9 months ago, and really haven’t looked back. Coming from Windows, I found Mint Cinnamon had a very familiar feel to Windows UI, so I wasn’t getting frustrated with the simple muscle memory actions that I’ve been used to for so long.
That being said, I’ve tried various distros over time, and I’ve liked certain aspects of some, but found the overall package of Mint suited me the best.
Yup Mint seems to be the winner, very stable and is consistent in its look and feel the Mate is light on resources and looks very much like the Cinnamon. I have a client that is switching over to mint from Win7 partially done one newer systems and former Win users are comfortable with switch.
Fedora use to be my goto it kept me cutting edge and feature packed. Back when it was I had the dang Nvidia driver issue and retired it when Win10 came out.
I’m using POP OS on my laptop and I have a Ubuntu Desktop VM that I do some work in. On the server side I’ve come to like CentOS, although I have some Ubuntu and a Debian servers as well.
Im using Pop_OS! and i am very happy, it never breaks. I know its Ubuntu Based, but still, its full of excellent unique features that make it its own excellent spin of Ubuntu.
I also used KDE Neon for a while before settling down with POP.
I suggest you try it.
I’ve tried a few Ubuntu based Desktops, but have been using Budgie for the last year or so, seems very staple. I would like to see an official Cinnamon supported Ubuntu rather than Mint. I tried Mint when dabbling on changing from Windows, but couldn’t really get on with it.
As others have suggested, try a few different ones in a VM.
I prefer KDE plasma because of the eye candy. I have tried most of the big names here. I have a nagging issue with arch based distros and my intel wireless card in my xps 13. So I settled on Fedora 29 with my own minimal KDE spin. I don’t like the junk on the official kde spin. I must say it works very well. Solid and no issues. Battery could be better but it is kde after all.
Pop!_OS on the desktop now (thanks for letting me know about it @LTS_Tom!). Servers have always been Debian primarily, but I also have quite a few Ubuntu VMs nowadays in production.
Want to spend more time in the RHEL/CentOS world for servers because so many swear by it, but I don’t have a use case™ for it at the moment.
Ubuntu would score more points with me if netplan wasn’t such a steaming trash heap. I thought complaining about netplan was just a meme, but nope… it’s really that bad.