Desktop Distribution of the Year
 

Which distribution do you think is best suited for a Desktop machine?

--jeremy

Slackware/Salix.

Same as i always vote for Pinky...Debian!!

AntiX - as has been since the demise of #! :)

Depends on the use case, mostly...

I'll throw a dice.

For me it has always been OpenSuse as a "it just works" distro. It has been for anyway, one I can just install and use with very few tweaks.

Mageia is my main distro but thinking of using Debian more...

Distribution
 

Has to be Ubuntustudio.

Desktop
 

Devuan ascii

Could do better with drivers but still best overall system
 

I've used Ubuntu for five years. They could do a much, much better job with video drivers and wireless drivers, like Mint does. It's wrong one should have to get new video cards, new monitors, and new cables, that work with Ubuntu's limited video drivers! But overall I like Ubuntu. It has matured greatly in five years. I like the new desktop layout. The one they used in 2014, you had to install a different disktop and it could destroy your OS. I adjusted the layout so the dock is on the bottom and not the left.

What I most like about Ubuntu, is the ease of working under the hood, that you can't even do with Mint because there are no up to date books and noone will tell you how, and, USALLY, the caliber of the support. Ubuntu's own forums have slipped since five years ago, though. They suddenly seem a wonder of not answering the question you asked, if they answer at all. And, people seem to keep repeating the same bugs I'm reporting, over and over again - for YEARS. They keep saying whatever you're running into is fixed and obviously it is not. They closed the bug report and you have to create a new one, and then you have to jump through fifty hoops to do that. I'm finding I do get my questions answered, just not on Ubuntu's forums.

Slackware

I was a Mint fan for many years, but this last year I have been swayed by Peppermint, it just works, on everything. From the slowest Atom single core to my i7 quad core.

I vote for PEPPERMINT.

Neon is missing

PCLinuxOS

This is always a difficult one for me since I tend to consider distros over and above those I use or have ever used.

e.g. Last time I voted MX since I'm impressed with the work they've put in and they've done very well with getting to the top of the DW list.

I also think the pace of development with Mint is great and that they're doing good work with getting newcomers to Linux.

I respect what Devuan are doing, however, there has been no release this year and, as far as I am concerned, their future looks to be somewhat in doubt.

Slackware would be my second choice: even though the pace of development in -current has been furious, there has been no release this year in stable and no indication of when one might arise.

So my vote goes to Debian - having had it back on my desktop for a couple of weeks now, it - I will say the clichéd phrase - "just works", and Buster seems to have ironed out some of the creases that were present in Stretch.

I find I cannot vote on this one. It really does depend entirely upon too many factors (starting with what you want to DO from your desktop). I love Debian stable, but RHEL is killer, Sparky is wonderful, VSIDO is nice, ELEMENTARY and Q4OS get out of the way and I get more done... It is difficult to find any desktop distribution that I really do not think is wonderful in one or another desktop use case.

I'm quite similar to what you say above wpeckham. While there are some distros (like Puppy Linux) I really don't get the point of, and IMHO are a pointless excuse for writing code; generally speaking, it's really about having a system were I can do what I want without anything getting in the way (as you say above). And like yourself, I find there's plenty of distributions that realistically could service my needs as well as any of the other suitable choices. The main reason I chose the distro I'm currently using was for the desktop environment it comes with by default, as I'm not a fan of installing a different DE after the installation of the system itself (particularly when a different DE has been installed by default).

I prefer KDE as far as the DE is concerned, it does the job and gives me the control I want, and it looks nice and has the "bells and whistles" to boot. Plus, I've become comfortable with it over the years, and therefore see no reason to learn a different DE/WM. I have used GNOME before, but there was always problems with it, and it looks like someone done a turd on the screen IMHO. So therefore, unless it's a distro that install's KDE by default, or let's me install it instead of a different DE/WM at installation time, I'm not interested in using it as my "daily driver". So since I was using CentOS before my current distro, I couldn't even vote in this poll before. So this time around I just voted for OpenMandriva, since that's what I'm currently using (and posting from right now).

For me the following is important:

- Stable Rolling Release

- MyLiveCD to create your own fully configured system into a bootable ISO for any notebook and PC.

- I could never remember terms and names well, so command sequences into a terminal are almost impossible for me ( it is very tedious to open the manual over and over again ). PCLinuxOS has the PCC System System Administration Suite, which allows you to set up everything in the system.

- A direct communication with developer and packager.

- To have the possibility to request for new packages to be included in the repos.

- A direct communication for " Broken Package " so that the bug is fixed very quickly.

- The APT system with Synaptic

- A helpful, friendly forum that gives constructive answers and is not referred xx times to anything, or thick textbooks.

- A large hardware support.

- Very easy for non-free driver installing, e.g. for NV only two package and two new kernel package. Kernles don't must updating, but come in the repos as new package listing and not as update list in synaptic.

- Not a systemd it have.

All that have PCLinuxOS

About 12 years ago, when Vista came along, I started to seriously work with Linux and tested countless distros.

I think the same.

https://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/inde...c,90479.0.html

and I don't agree with Systemd and that's why I had to delete Debian from all my machines about 3 years ago, because Systemd doesn't work with my older hardware. Before Systemd was introduced in Debian I had PCLinuxOS and Debian installed and everything without problems.

Now I only use PCLnuxOS - Lxqt, incredibly stable and fast even on my traditional HDDs. :thumbsup: :)

Mageia is my choice
 

---

Manjaro KDE, the awesome linux distro I ever used.

ToriOS ( http://torios.top/ ) is an interesting lightweight alternatives that wasn't mentioned in the poll this year.

I cannot vote.
The distro I have been happily using for the past 5+ years, I wouldn't want to see it win the poll.
Is that weird?

PCLinuxOS and Slackware :-)
Bye
Francesco bat

PCLinuxOS

PCLinuxOS
The Future is Here!

"When you get serious," Slackware!
:)

Desktop Distribution of the Year
 

PCLinuxOS

Desktop Distribution of the Year
 

I use PCLinuxOS

PCLinuxOS for me

Yes. What could be the motivation for that?

I see that the distro & its maintainers are doing well, and like Linux in general, have nothing to gain from an even wider user base.

Distributions are for the benefit of their users, so to not inform anyone about a distro because the distro doesn't need more users means that people would potentially miss out on a distro which could be of great benefit to them. Maybe you're concerned that a wider userbase would dilute the quality of said distro but that's totally up to the maintainers. If you have faith in them, it shouldn't be a problem.

Faith does not come into it, nor any other of your somewhat ideological postulations.
Let's just agree to disagree.

So we have here a love and hate relationship. :)

I don't see "Sabayon Linux" in the polls. (I remember it wasn't there last time either.)

Can it be added to the polls?

Thanks.

PClinuxOS - Just works and works :)

Sabayon got 0 votes multiple years and was removed after 2017.

--jeremy

openSUSE has been my main distro since Middle School, and Leap to this day powers my rig

Pop_OS?!?! Poor System76.

Distro - Arch
 

I installed Arch on my machine for the first time just a few days before 2019 ended - on 28 December. Before that I had used KDE Neon for a couple of years - and I was quite happy.


But, then I decided to try Arch. So, tried the installation on VMs a few times, and then I actually started using it as my daily driver.


I vote for Arch because it has opened a completely new horizon for me. I'm absolutely loving it.

I moved from Manjaro to Fedora a month ago, but I still voted for Manjaro because it gets so many recommendations.

Mint

Slackware
 

back to Slackware,
really anything which doesn't have systemd

Xubuntu, to be specific ... but I'd rather vote for Trisquel.

Arch

Bleeding edge...

Please add GhostBSD and NomadBSD. Thanks.

It's an easy pick for me: Manjaro (even though now I just use Arch).
All in all, Manjaro is what you would get if Arch was newbie-friendly (but it's a derivative, so it's not really arch).
I typically prefer the KDE version of Manjaro, but the XFCE version is also quite nice.
The default theme is very beautiful, and the fact that it is based off of Arch gives you access to the AUR, giving you an unbeatable amount of software. It even has a program (either Pamac or Octopi depending on if you get XFCE or KDE) for automating AUR installations.
Manjaro is really tough to beat. Did I mention it was rolling-release? That means you don't have to reinstall from a new ISO every 9 months!

Slackware, because I still like it best of the Linux distros and BSDs I use (although I like each for its own reasons), and it’s the only new Linux installation I did in 2019, that I used extensively, SlackwareARM -current on Raspberry Pi 4. (Raspbian also on RPi from time to time, but I use Slack a lot more.)

TKS

Gentoo

After some 20 years of RedHat-ery, I'd had to switch, now that CentOS seems to be Gnome or nothing. Having had a problem with a badly-designed Xubuntu undate, I decided to go to PCLinuxOS — rolling release without the excitement! It's not perfect, but it works well and has a large repository.