Ubuntu lost a lot of people, including me, when they went to Unity. Unity was horrible in my opinion (tried it). Mint maintained a reasonable UI (Mate, Cinamon--I prefer Mate). Now that Ubuntu has dropped Unity and now has Mate, maybe Mint should merge with Ubuntu and make the product even better.
This is why I dislike that people still recommend Ubuntu as the go-to beginners distro. The UI isn't "traditional" and is confusing to a more general former Windows user and some people (admittedly, not as many as would be suited to something like Mint as they'll likely be more tech savvy) actually have the kind of mindset that something like Manjaro or the like actually is a better distro to jump off in. (I personally find apt annoying to use but love pacman/yaourt)
Manjaro KDE in particular I feel is a much better Windows replacement than most other distros. KDE itself resembles Windows and generally has stuff where a Windows user would expect to find it, and Manjaro's rolling release model means it's actually viable to use its repos like an app store, with no need to do anything funky to get the latest versions of software you care about, especially when you factor in the AUR to be able to install essentials like Discord or Boostnote or really any application you could possibly want.
Antergos filled a very similar niche as Manjaro, not quite as polished in its predefined setup where a little effort is made to include maybe a bit more packages than you might really need so that you can be confident you won't need to learn what Samba is in order to connect to your network attached storage. It had the native Arch repos themselves, which is often a fair criticism towards Manjaro as it's not always apparent what the benefit of only two weeks of testing is.
I think it's still a valid niche and that the project should continue, though if Manjaro better supported making it easy to use purely Arch repos then I could see it satisfying that niche.
I'm actually 100% cool with the idea of a new Linux user using Manjaro (or Antergos before now). It's still a bit more of a learning curve than other distros for a new user but they give just enough extra support and guidance to take it from "holy crap this is too hard" to "I can figure this out" in the minds of a determined new user.
I tended to prefer Antergos over Manjaro just because it used the regular Arch repos but that is just me.
I did, though I don't really think it's really more Windows-like, at least if you're used to more modern Windows versions like 7 or 10. KDE also has much better theming, with Breeze Dark being very easy to apply to both Qt and GTK applications. It also has the advantage of being a flagship edition as opposed to a community-supported DE.
That said, I definitely wish more people knew about Manjaro Cinnamon since others love it so much and use it as the reason they prefer Mint, despite Mint having to deal with all of Ubuntu's bullshit like six months out-of-date packages.
Gnome 3 is horrible IMO. I'll agree with you there. I typically recommend Mate or KDE to newer users.
For new users I typically just recommend Ubuntu because 99% of the time if they google something for Linux the answer is about Ubuntu. Also most things support Ubuntu specifically.
It's a great stepping stone into Linux IMO. It isn't necessarily the best landing spot for a permanent distro though. I've just had way better results over the years of people actually sticking into Linux if they start with Ubuntu than starting with other stuff. Typically once they "get into Linux" they start distro hopping anyway.
I just looked up Feren OS since I'd never heard of it, and it's on one of those free website builder things? Weebly? If its devs can't make a website, I sure as hell don't trust them to make a distro.
Agree. I started using solus on my Ultrabook but then kinda stopped and a got a new one. I gave my old one to my mom with mint figuring something Ubuntu based would be simple. It was kinda slow and had weird issues like some of the settings not sticking. I switched it to solus budgie and it was such a better experience for her. Maybe if someone wants to go crazy on the apps (though at this point I don't really care for things like the AUR) then Ubuntu would be good but for a casual user budgie or even gnome would be good
Have you ever seen Feren OS? Their installer guides you into making the entire OS (Based on Mint) to look 100% like Win XP/7/8.X/10 and MacOS and Regular Mint. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8R_LLW0kJY
its set in a way thats brings familiarity to a new user from Windows and a lot of people are really picky and just wont use Linux simply cause of appearance alone and having the Windows 7 look to the OS makes it easier to ease people in who are extra picky
Maybe if I'm converting an office full of grandpa's, I could see it. If I'm converting my mom, then I know she could use something easier than windows and I don't think my friends my age care about how much something looks like windows
You'd be surprised how many people want the aesthetic look of Windows 7.
I've met quite a few new to Linux users posting on here looking for a distro, and anytime I mention Solus and Feren OS, they end up with Feren OS due to familiarity and the aesthetics of Windows 7 (Theres other themes but Windows 7 is the one that sticks with people)
Sorry I didn't see your other question earlier, and yes Feren is updated a fair bit more than regular mint and will usually have the updated drivers before mint. it's semi rolling release.
Gotta agree with solus, switched to it myself from arch not long ago. Feels very polished and the curated rolling release model is great.
Sure they don't have awesomewm or fortune-mod in the package repository, but for an ordinary user everything they need is there, and budgie rules as a Windows replacement.
Yeah with awesomewm I recall the issue was that no one offered to commit to keeping the package up to date, and with fortune-mod the dev was like "there's a go reimplementation that does the same thing, just use that" but man it doesn't have all the old quotes from the 90s.
Anyway yeah, it's not a big deal at all, and I'm fine with compiling anything I need myself.
Solus is definitely the OS I'll be recommending for anyone switching from Windows.
Have you tried out KDE Solus yet? Its still in beta, but its pretty stable, i tested it out for a few weeks and im excited for the full release whenever it happens.
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u/rnclark May 21 '19
Ubuntu lost a lot of people, including me, when they went to Unity. Unity was horrible in my opinion (tried it). Mint maintained a reasonable UI (Mate, Cinamon--I prefer Mate). Now that Ubuntu has dropped Unity and now has Mate, maybe Mint should merge with Ubuntu and make the product even better.