Background:I consider myself a linux newbie, although since around 1998 for each year I have tried different linux distros to see if it could replace Windows.
I bought "Red Hat" when it was sold in a box at the stores and then later-- I think it was just called "Suse", in a box. While fun to play with
for me it wasn't a game changer.
The game changer came out when a few years back I tried Ubuntu. The only thing that stopped it being a window killer was driver support
and pc games.
But since last year, that is no longer the case with drivers, at least for Ubuntu and its derivatives. But what killed it was the early version of Unity.
But even that this year is pretty nice and with their efforts to go multiple devices from phones, tablets to pc's it was a cool move.
But as an avid pc gamer, Windows could not be replaced.
So here we are in the later half of 2013 and things have changed quite a bit. Valve has released its Steam game distribution system for Linux.
Is in the process of releasing a gaming pc like box that is based on linux to be hooked up to your TV's.
Ubuntu is developing a new graphic subsystem that is supposed to be very nice for graphics card developers to support.
Windows 8, at least in my circle of local acquaintances is a big loser and has turned numerous people into Apple users, or had them take
their new hardware back to the stores and stick with their windows 7 based older systems.
Linux Distros:I have been trying a lot of the various popular linux distros listed on DistroWatch.com.
Most recently: Ubuntu, Debian, Linux Mint, Fedora, Arch and Manjaro.
Some with various desktops.
My Netbook:I am currently doing my programming on my Acer Aspire 722 netbook. It is a dual core 1gHz AMD All Purpose Unit(APU) C-60 processor.
I maxed the RAM to 4GB.
VirtualBox:Using VirtualBox running on my Windows 7, all of the distros worked fine. But with my hardware, just too slow to be practical for compiling
programs constantly. Thumbs up for the current VirtualBox, I was really impressed.
So now onto installing directly into a dual boot scenario:All of the Ubuntu and its based derivatives could see my hardware perfectly, from the wireless broadcom network card to my webcam and sound.
Non Ubuntu, but Debian based distros could not use my wireless network card and even when I installed the firmware drivers manually and could see other wireless networks in my area
they could not connect to my wireless router.
The only non Debian based distro I tried was Fedora and it too could not see my wireless card nor could I get it setup to work.
So the winner here is Ubuntu and its Derivatives, they see everything and work great. Even better than my Windows 7 when installed fresh.
Ubuntu:Ubuntu with Unity, very nice. Some quirks with Unity in that the single menu bar at the top sometimes covers text put their by Dash for example.
But Ubuntu with Unity is just slow on my netbook. Noticeably slower than when I am in Windows 7.
Linux Mint 15 Olivia with XCFE:I ended up with Linux Mint 15 Olivia xcfe edition. It is a lot faster than Ubuntu Unity or the default Linux Mint Desktop Cinnamon or Mate.
It has an incredible start button like menu system named Whisper. He shows this cool feature at the 2:30 time mark and on.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8Zqh7TaqtEI still don't think it is as fast as Windows 7, but pretty darn close. And I have not optimized my settings yet in my Olivia xcfe install.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHRGo-djXksManjora:I will use this install now to learn Linux once and for all and then I think the future is going to be something
like what Arch linux is doing. This distro will be my next install and hopefully last because of its design
of rolling releases. It is a distro based on Arch Linux.
http://manjaro.org/It comes with versions for all the popular light desktops, at least that is all I was looking at:
OpenBox, xcfe and lxde.
Future looks bright indeed for Linux:I think Mark Shuttleworth with Canonical have really helped the Linux world move faster along
towards a mainstream OS. Their coming out with a new release every six months really got the ball rolling.
Then their efforts to write device drivers when device manufacturers balked was another big step.
His vision for a new interface that can work on all sized devices is something overlooked with Unity.
Mir:And this new graphics subsystem they are developing, is going to be huge and long overdue.
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTQ0NzAI think the Arch Linux team bringing rolling releases to the linux world is another big step.
Valve and Steam:And lastly a major player in the pc games world like Valve, with its incredible and popular game distribution system Steam
jumping head first into Linux is huge!
http://steamforlinux.com/I thank John for pushing me and others to switch to Linux on various forums. I think now the linux world
is finally getting to a real state where it can be a Windows replacement for all users.
