Linux Desktop Distro Shootout

An anonymous reader writes "InfoWeek has posted an open-source OS comparison. Linux Shootout: 7 Desktop Distros Compared pits openSUSE, Ubuntu 8.4, PCLinuxOS, Mandriva Linux One, Fedora, SimplyMEPIS, and CentOS 5.1 against each other. And the winner is ... Ubuntu. Author Serdar Yegulalp writes: 'Ubuntu 8.4 remains one of the best desktop distributions for many good reasons: it works with almost any hardware you throw at it, and has tons of features for both existing Linux users and prospective converts from Windows.' He also gave openSUSE points for ease of use on the desktop, and Mandriva kudos for ease of administration."

Ubuntu 8.04

[SkankinMonkey]

I'm quickly finding that I prefer 7.10 to 8.04. The overall system seems a lot more bogged down, lots of freezes with programs that never occurred in earlier versions. I do like a lot of the new functionality but I hope that they iron out some of the outstanding issues (especially considering it's supposed to be a LTR).

And the winner is .....

[Taco Cowboy]

No matter which distro takes the #1 spot, the real grand prize winner is ....

                                                              THE USER !!!!

Fedora

[BountyX]

Fedora 9 comes out 8 days 3

Re:Ubuntu 8.04

[SkankinMonkey]

I've submitted almost all of my crash reports to them, and all the crashes I've experienced are known bugs (and had multiple page threads on their forums during alpha/beta testing). That being said, I think they should have held off a bit on a final release and squashed a few more bugs that were pretty proliferate and user inhibiting.

Re:Ubuntu 8.04

[Anonymous Coward]

I am running 8.04 since the beta releases - no issues apart from the (now fixed) https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/215728 [launchpad.net]. Please send out bug reports - most times I reported one, I have gotten a useful response - workaround, fix etc.

How many of those distros

[pembo13]

even claim to be a desktop distro? I use Fedora on my desktop, but I don't think they claim it to be a desktop distro.

Poor research

[Spy der Mann]

The guy simply didn't do his homework. For starters, he thinks MEPIS is based on Mandriva - but it's based on Debian. Then, uses the latest beta of Ubuntu to compete with older distros. Finally, there is NO COMPARISON CHART.

What kind of research is that? He just shows a separate review of each distro, to finally announce "and the winner is...". I call this bull. Much more informative is the "girlfriend linux test" article.

Mod article down.

Re:Add free version.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's such s shame that so many slashdotters can't seem to wrap their heads around the differences between 'add' and 'ad', or 'too' and 'to'.

Re:Debian

[adlucem]

Simply because the guy doesn't know what he's talking about. MEPIS based on Mandriva? lol. Desktop-centric paper, what need is there to include CentOS (esp. if you already have Fedora)? etc.

Re:"Almost any hardware you throw at it"

[strabes]

I feel like everyone on slashdot should know this, but I'll repeat it once again. Not having support for various wireless/video/etc cards is not the fault of linux or the kernel developers. It is the fault of the vendors for not providing proper drivers and/or documentation. This will only improve with time as the popularity of linux grows and greater pressure is put on vendors to provide the aforementioned drivers & documentation.

Re:And the winner is .....

[DaveV1.0]

Having more choices is not necessarily a good thing. [apa.org]

Re:"Almost any hardware you throw at it"

[Hatta]

What kind of weird ass hardware are you using? The reason most people say that most hardware is well supported on linux is because it's the truth. If you're that unlucky that you bought oddball hardware, that's too bad and it does need to be fixed. But it really does work with almost all hardware you throw at it. Emphasis on the almost.

And I'll point out that OS X works with even less hardware than Ubuntu does. That didn't stop you from choosing it. Why should hardware support stop anyone from choosing Ubuntu?

Relatively worthless, even harmful, comparison

[MaulerOfEmotards]

This review/comparison is posted May 4th or 5th, when the distros out there are Ubuntu 8.04 release (not beta, and featuring FF 3b5, not b4); Mandriva 2008.1; openSUSE 11.0 beta; and Fedora 9 preview. Thus, the selection of distros compared is outdated already at the time of review, and worse, unfair between distros (bias?). Compounding this, there are factual errors and lack of in-depth coverage.

This review sais very little about the current state of affairs and is of minimal real benefit to anyone not already initad in the Linux world. It might even do a misfavour to newbies wanting to take the plunge.

Admittably, it takes some time testing seven distros on five platforms, but that doesn't change the fact that it fails to represent the actual state of LinuxLand and the distros pitted against each other.

Re:why CentOS?

[AndGodSed]

I'd Replace CentOS with Linux Mint. There are only two Deb based distros in this lineup (kick me if I am wrong...) and no Debian?

If they include CentOS and RHEL, surely Debian could have made a bow... or is that too advanced for your average Linux Desktop?

Almost Any Hardware...?

[RobDude]

I want to be a 'Linux Guy' - I downloaded the Ubuntu ISO yesterday and I'm ready to do it. Only problem is I can't get online.

I'm going to go to BestBuy *TODAY*. Can anyone here tell me which wireless network adapter will work 100% out of the box. I'd like for it to support WPA and WEP and not require any WINDOWS DRIVERS or any of that crap.

If someone could please provide a link to a wireless network adapter from the www.BestBuy.com website; I'll go and buy it and use Linux and tell everyone how great Linux is.

Since Linux is ready for the desktop and all that jazz, I'm sure this is an incredibly easy question, but I haven't found a simple concrete answer yet.

I'd seriously be very grateful to anyone who can help me.

Re:"Almost any hardware you throw at it"

[shutdown -p now]

I feel like everyone on slashdot should know this, but I'll repeat it once again. Not having support for various wireless/video/etc cards is not the fault of linux or the kernel developers. It is the fault of the vendors for not providing proper drivers and/or documentation.

I feel like everyone on Slashdot should know this, but I'll repeat it once again. Users, for the most part, don't care why something is not supported - if it isn't, they are simply not going to bother with that particular distro/OS. Blaming vendors (even when fair) does not achieve anything - they just shrug and say, "what do we care about your niche geek OS?", and users get even stronger impression that they should stay away from that weird Linux thingy.

And, no, I don't know a solution to this short of waiting and hoping for the better. But we certainly shouldn't be telling people that "most hardware works in Linux" - because that is outright lie.

Sadly I've given up

[rAiNsT0rm]

I've been a Linux guy since 1995 and as much as I hate to say it, I have given up. There needs to be a singular distro at the heart of it all which is steered by either Linus or a committee that focuses on one vision and goal. Chaos is great for creating a million cool bits, but not for organizing them into one unified, cohesive unit.

Let's finally get over the aversion to one main distro, or one of each tool and app. No one cares about choice when all it means is 40 buggy half-assed apps and no single solid one. It is a lot of wasted talent, time, and effort. With some direction and drive Linux could surpass anything out there.

Until people begin to wake up, I'll keep it for servers only. Oh, and I'd personally like to thank the genius who decided to go with a beta version of Firefox for a long-term support version of an OS... now THAT is how to FAIL.

Re:Ubuntu 8.04

[twistedsymphony]

Release Schedules are nice and all but what's the point of bundling up a "stable release" if it's not actually stable?

If you want to download the latest SVN snapshot every 6 months that should be your prerogative but I've been burned too many times by "stable release"s that weren't actually as advertised simply because someone said "it's release day... SHIP IT!".

I always do some form of testing but it's a lot of wasted effort if you're installing something that you assume is already as clean as it can be, and it's really not.

Re:Lastest Ubuntu, Older other distros

[Fri13]

That's right! I got feeling that editor actually planned this so Ubuntu would get better functionality. I use Mandriva myself and I get everything what Ubuntu does, even it was 2 weeks earlier and lacks 5 years support. Should do after 3 years new comparision with Mandriva 2011.1 and Ubuntu 8.04?

Editor should wait few weeks to get a hands those OpenSUSE and Fedora distributions. It would be fair.

Re:Sadly I've given up

[tuffy]

How do you propose removing the freedom of developers to work on things outside of the One True Distro?

Re:Ubuntu 8.04

[nine-times]

I guess I just figure that a lot of "stable" software won't really have all the kinks ironed out until after release. When something is released, it's probably going to put onto hardware that no one was testing on, and it's probably going to be used in ways that it wasn't used during testing.

I agree that if there are known major bugs that will be extremely common, or bugs that are show-stoppers (e.g. cause significant data loss), then release should be pushed back. But if you want something extremely stable, then you might consider holding back your upgrade for a little while.

But I'm not making an argument from principle. I'm just saying that, from experience, I've never seen anyone get something 100% bug-free. Even Debian stable can have some quirks. So I'd rather have a regular release schedule than have progress on Ubuntu held back until every little bug can be worked out.

Re:Sadly I've given up

[rAiNsT0rm]

Very simply. Just as a million cool and unique and visionary buildings are built from a fairly standard basic foundation, or the plethora of cars all sharing similar chassis and components.

Having a nice stable foundation actually makes things easier and better for developers (myself included). It has NOTHING to do with removing anyones freedom.

Also, once you have a great single distro and tools/apps THEN branch off and create your variants and niche products.

Re:Sadly I've given up

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been dabbling with Linux on my main machines for about 5 or 6 years, and I have to say I somewhat agree with you. Here's my latest experience: I have a machine with Vista pre-loaded... everything more or less works out of the box, albeit with customary Vista bloat and certain niggling inconsistencies. I put Ubuntu 8.04 on an empty partition, booted it up and... while it works and detected my hardware, a milion issues keep me from using it as much as Vista. The CPU frequency adjustor daemon didn't work at first, making the CPU overheat to 104 C doing nothing. Once that was fixed, I found that updating my Banshee or Amarok libraries would overheat the CPU, which never was a problem with Vista (or XP, or previous linux distros). Add this to near constant crashes -- all fixable, but requiring some tinkering -- and you have a desktop which just isn't as consistently solid as Vista, as strange as it is to say.

This is an echo of all the other times I've loaded up a desktop-oriented Linux. One thing or another doesn't work right, whether it's the wireless, the music player, the wine, and so on.

I think Linux would benefit from having a central, singular, top-down organization focusing on a single distro, because waiting for all the volunteer developers to sort out nagging problems adds up to a difficult experience for the user, no matter how much 'progress' is being made.

Of course this is contrary to the philosophy of Linux, and to some extent isn't fixable. It is what it is.

Unfair comparison?

[trollebolle]

A shootout between desktop distros days after the new Ubuntu is out seems to be in favor of Ubuntu. As others have mentioned, Fedora 9 is imminent. It's also worth mentioning that RHEL5.2 will be released soon (in a month or so), and will sport Firefox 3 along with new versions of Openoffice (2.3), Thunderbird (2.0) and Evolution. CentOS follows RHEL closely, so CentOS 5.2 won't be far behind.

Re:Why Mandriva One? Simple ...

[Anonymous Coward]

The distro selection was done for a reason: TO ALLOW UBUNTU TO WIN, of course. Or they were stupid and unqualified to do valid comparison; you choose.

They have taken a page from Microsoft's comparison practices.

"We have met the enemy and they is us." -- Pogo

Ubuntu rocks, except for...

[pinkfloydhomer]

suspend to ram, suspend to disk, suspend, sleep, hibernate, whatever you wanna call these features.
On most hardware, this doesn't work as flawless as on Windows, if at all.

I use these features all the time on Windows. When I press my power button, my computer suspends to RAM. Takes a split second. When I press power again, the computer is up and working again in another split second. In the meantime, the computer says nothing. All fans and harddrives are turned off.

This is the feature that always makes me go back from any Linux distro :(

Re:"Almost any hardware you throw at it"

[pembo13]

It's not a lie that most hardware works in Linux. I would guess (without evidence) that more currently existing hardware works on Linux than Windows. And the fact that people don't care about the why doesn't make the why irrelevant or untrue.

Re:8.4?

[doti]

Isn't it unfair to compare Ubuntu 8.04 to Fedora 8?

Fedora 9 will be launched soon, they could have used the beta.

Fedora 8 could be compared to Ubuntu 7.10

Re:Sadly I've given up

[HalAtWork]

It's funny because above, someone was claiming that variety was being eliminated. People generally use the same software together across all distributions, the distros just tie the software all together into repositories with maybe some unique administrative tools, a unique theme, and their own configuration of kernel options and patches. But people use the same software to get work done, and work is focused on them to make them better. The apps on my linux desktop work great together because they don't exclude from each other support for file formats and the same libraries can be used across different programs that don't hide their secrets from each other, so actually I find everything a lot more cohesive on Linux generally. Apps don't try and trample on each other with their settings and tray monitoring applications and that sort of thing as well, and I don't need to update to the premium version for needed functionality.

So 2 versions of RH and no SLACKWARE!?!

[arfonrg]

So, basically, two versions of RedHat were included and no Slackware?

I guess they were scared of Slackware's awesomeness!

Re:8.4?

[timeOday]

If they had tested a beta and encountered hiccups, people would have complained that evaluating a beta against a production release isn't fair. And between 7 distros, I'd guess at least one has an upcoming release at any given time.

Re:Sadly I've given up

[grumbel]

Oh, and I'd personally like to thank the genius who decided to go with a beta version of Firefox for a long-term support version of an OS... now THAT is how to FAIL.

Having a beta in a stable LTS release might seems a bit stupid at first, but the reason the beta is in there is exactly because it is a LTS release. Would they have gone with Firefox2 they would have been stuck with that for many years to come, going with Firefox3-Beta allows them to upgrade to Firefox3 once it comes out (i.e. very soon), so they don't have to worry about supporting obsolete Firefox2 down the road.

That aside, I agree. I would much prefer if all those distros out there would just die or merge together. Luckily that is already slowly happening. A lot of distros these days are Debian based, instead of being just hacked up from scratch.

You don't sound like a "Linux guy".

[srobert]

"I've been a Linux guy since 1995 and as much as I hate to say it, I have given up. There needs to be a singular distro at the heart of it all which is steered by either Linus or a committee that focuses on one vision and goal. Chaos is great for creating a million cool bits, but not for organizing them into one unified, cohesive unit."

You don't sound like a Linux guy to me. You sound like a BSD guy.

No mention of Yast

[cbhacking]

All jokes aside, I'd say the biggest screw-up in this article (from the personal perspective of a openSuse user) is no mention, whatsoever, of Suse's truly fantastic configuration tool Yast. There's a lot of good stuff in Suse, but I'd go so far as to say Yast is *the* reason I use it. Everything from server configuration to driver management to partition/mounting management to package management to X configuration all in one place, with excellent help tools and generally fully as much control as one could get by editing the config files manually (some of them, like the bootloader config, actually allow this - with helpful information and comments). Add the ability to run it in a console using a very well-done ncurses interface, and you have the perfect tool for administration via SSH or fixing an xorg.conf SNAFU.

What is really odd is that considerable mention was made of a few other distros' config tools, and while I can't claim to have used all of the reviewed distros, I would state that Yast blows away the config tools of, for example, SimplyMEPIS (which was promoted largely on the basis of such tools, and which I'll admit are good - but hardly as comprehensive or permitting so much control).