2016 LinuxQuestions.org Members Choice AwardsThis forum is for the 2016 LinuxQuestions.org Members Choice Awards.
You can now vote for your favorite projects/products of 2016. This is your chance to be heard! Voting ends on February 7th.
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View Poll Results: Desktop Distribution of the Year
Clearly Slackware lacks a lot of criteria of a good desktop, including user-friendliness, but unfortunately there are too many Slackware fanboys on this site.
Try Linux From Scratch with Virtualbox inside it, anything's possible but a degree in computer science couldn't hurt...
Back in my Debian days I started to build LFS: while building one of the components I got an error I didn't understand, and I guess I wasn't interested enough to try to sort it out. I might try again in the future, but Slackware works so amazingly well that I'm getting lazy.
Clearly Slackware lacks a lot of criteria of a good desktop, including user-friendliness, but unfortunately there are too many Slackware fanboys on this site.
Part of the problem with the "XXX of the year" is that most people answer what is best for them and/or what they use. For distributions then, things like how technologically capable or inclined one is or desktop selections available can affect the choice. LQ participants may over represent those inclined toward Slackware in part for that reason, in part for historical reasons.
Once a distro is chosen, things like file managers and package managers tend to follow. Note that Dolphin received 25% of the vote for FM, tracking well with the 28% for KDE as DE of the year. I think that Dolphin is a very good FM, but the best of 2016? For me the best package manager I have used is pacman, yet dpkg "won" the vote likely as a result of all the Debian-based distros people use. Both these tend to depend on your needs as well. For example, if you are moving a lot of files around, doing bulk renamings, etc., it is unlikely that you are going to vote for a bare-bones FM. As a fan of E I was almost forced to find a non-native file manager as EFM is as light duty as it is light weight. Thanks to a recommendation, I discovered Double Commander, now I could not imagine working with a FM that did not have (at least) two panes.
In the end the votes tend to reflect something about the LQ user base. The best part is that they allow us to learn about new applications. I use VLC heavily for my work, but have been an Amarok-Clementine fan for more intensive audio use. However, I am now trying out DeadBeef of which I learned here.
In many ways, rather than being "best," the questions might better be most innovative, most improved, most surprising, most used, and/or favourite depending on the category. For example, distros tend to be pretty stable through time as long as their primary desktop does not change radically or their QA fall down on the job. As a result, if I have settled in with a distro that is "best" for me, I am going to stick with it and there will be no changes from year to year. So does it make sense for me to simply vote for what I have been using? This year, for exmaple, I decided to take a different approach to the best distro, voting for Solus due to its innovation/improvement. MX Linux seemed to me a great choice for the obvious thought and care that went into producing a great out-of-the-box experience -- so good that I would definitely recommend it for people ahead of either Mint or Ubuntu. Personally, I would prefer to use Arch itself, but I am not using it at the moment because I have needed to get a couple of computers set up quickly, and I want to support and use/be familiar with distros that I know others, with even less technical expertise than I, can just load and use.
The bottomline is that these are mostly fun exercises that let us have a glimpse at what people are using, how they are approaching the tasks they use their machines for, and learn a thing or two along the way.
In the end the votes tend to reflect something about the LQ user base. The best part is that they allow us to learn about new applications.
This. I have always taken part in these polls mostly because there are always people asking to get new software included. As for Slackware, I imagine it must be a good distro, but I hardly hear anything about it outside LQ!
Back in my Debian days I started to build LFS: while building one of the components I got an error I didn't understand, and I guess I wasn't interested enough to try to sort it out. I might try again in the future, but Slackware works so amazingly well that I'm getting lazy.
For me Slackware is for my basics but mostly just used as a rescue system...
That's good. For rescue I have a copy of SystemRescueCD (based on Gentoo) handy, but for simple chrooting, partitioning and such I don't think twice and use the Slackware install disc as a "live" system.
Kudos for that. I tried out *buntu and Fedora in the past, but discarded them soon. BSDs on the other hand are still here. Regarding Linux there's a couple of distros that I'd like to try, to see what's happing out there in other cool projects.
Quote:
Originally Posted by vtel57
"Slackware fanbois?" Uh... Wha... Er... I'm just shocked that someone would say such a thing.
I've used Slackware since version 2, so the site might call me a newbie, but it's due to posting. The timeline is about '96, I think.
I also tried many of the others and have always returned to Slackware.
Recently I started using ArchLinux, but I am considering to dump it. After a few updates, I
sat with a broken KDE for a week or two.
I can't recall that I voted, but maybe I did. I also can't say that popularity will in any way sway me to use another distribution. It is not what the majority say what determines whether something is useful.
Got my first computer refurbished (Frankinputer) from dad on my 18th "94," found GNU\Linux a year or two later so Slackware has been in there!
I got this ThinkPad T420 cheap (refurbished, wiped 7"pro") so I was able to afford a good internal SSD for stretch/sid. The DVD burner slides out and I found a Nimitz 2ND (solid-state or) HDD caddy so I got two, one for the original HDD where I have Slackware and storage. The second was to be for another SSD eventually but I like it too much as a drawer: cut down a Pop-a-Point pencil, 1/2 stack of some mini stickies, case with 4 SDs and a thumb drive with Slax!
Have fun!
:hattip:
:hatdrop:
Last edited by jamison20000e; 02-17-2017 at 12:11 AM.
Hmmmmm, missed the voting.
Do use Salix on 3 machines and slackware-current on a spare box. The wife seems to like Salix and I've had the fewest complaints.
Started my Linux adventure (with a BSD that didn't load quite right and then Ubuntu. Ubuntu to Mint for many years and sometimes plain Debian. Did a lot of distro hopping for a while (xubuntu, PCLOS, CentOS, Manjaro, ubuntu, opensuse, to name a few) but seemed to get along with Salix the best. "I am a lazy slacker" and don't care for KDE that much.
Things just seem to work and I feel I have a little more control.
Windows (10-"ick") has been relegated to a virtual machine for a couple of things that just won't run in Linux and wine.
Got started with DOS-3.0? around 1986. My oh my, how time flies.
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