Looking for linux desktop for work!!
 

Hello guys,

I am looking for a linux desktop for my working laptop, I consider myself a medium/advance user on linux, especially in Debian, I am looking for a distro for my working laptop, that I need it to have working wine, netbeans, gimp, libreoffice, and also automount usb flash drives feature on.

I been looking for Slackware and I like it a lot but, it seems it takes to long to set up everything to make it work perfectly, so, is there another desktop you can recommend me? or I just go back to Debian or go back to Slackware?
Also what about Linux Mint now that comes with Debian? Too easy?

Any help would be appreciate!!

I second the Slackware choice!

I went looking for a new GNU/Linux distro about 2005 for home, company and associates, and settled on Slackware... 8 years and dozens of systems later, not a second of regeret!

You might have to tweak and install a few things like wine, but pretty painless in my experience, and lots of excellent help here!

Slackware for the base system, SBo and Alien Bob for adding software packages, LQ for questions... can't go wrong!

Debian, for balance

Slackware is great, but you have to get 'proper involved' to tweak it for your needs

if this is for work you need to adapt quickly, and you will be able to do that quicker with debian...

But there is this word 'work'

you append ing

is this for 'production'?

If production, run with the pack..
Lone wolf .. do what you like


ref mint,
I really liked cinnamon but Debian is 'behind' so I compile from git.
take away cinnamon and Mint is just 'old' ubuntu with less comware

Must admit I've not used the Mint flavoured Debian.. No real need since I have the latest ( possibly broken ) cinnamon on Debian ( via Mint's git )

if you do not mind switching to a rpm based distro
There is OpenSUSE 12.3 , it can be striped down so that it is not too bloated .

but if you are used to using Debian , then why not use that

i suppose it really boils down to the network that you will be joining and what distro you are comfortable with.

i was a debian user for years for my desktops, then i had a contract supporting RHEL servers in the field. I started using the Fedora desktop just to make life a bit easier on me to remember the RH way of doing things as its slightly different then Debian way.

I still use Fedora today even though that contract ended almost a year ago.

bottom line you really need 2 things.

1. a distro that will be easy to join your work network.

2. something you are comfortable with.

as soon as those two requirements are met, you are golden. Debian, OpenSuSe, Fedora, Slackware, etc...

As you are already comfortable with debian, if you can get it to join the work network, id say stick with Debian, if not start playing around. Sadly thats rough when you need to work. It might be a good idea to install the company OS of choice for now and run several different distros in VMs to see what will be better for you then format and install that distro so you have less downtime at work. bosses tend to frown on downtime they are paying for :D.

Hello Guys,

Thanks a lot for the advices, really love second opinions!!!

I am still struggling with Debian or Slackware, because there is something I don't like about Debian that it seems to be solve in Slackware, basically the updates, I had problems in the past updating system with update manager and them it broke a dependency and make a mess on the system that is basically why I do not fill attracted to use Debian and attracted to use Slackware since for what I been playing and reading does not seem to have this issue since they are more carefull with updates, can someone confirm?

But, I am between both of this distros since linux mint it just seems to easy for me.


Thanks again!

take the path less traveled, Slackware.

Hey Habitual,

thanks for the advice, I personally I am starting to love Slackware, but, the problem is that I need wine to work on whatever distro I choose and it seems that with Slackware I cannot make it work, I installed version 1.6 of wine with wine tricks but, every software I tried to install from windows gives me error Rundll32.exe error and I personally dont understand how to fix it, I am running Slackware 14 x64 and I already install the multilib from Alien's Bob to make it work in 64 bit, but still the same, no way to go around.

Is there any tutorial to make work wine so, I can run some essential windows software I need for work like photoshop, ilustrator, office 2007 or 2010 and acrobat.

Without Wine for me its imposible to migrate to Slackware since I have to use this software mostly because of clients.

Can anyone help me out to fix this issue or show me a tutorial to see what I did wrong.

By the way I love in Slack, the SlackBuilds, very easy to use.

What about Arch?

Thanks again!!!

Take the least complicated path ;) and use ubuntu or linux mint.
I'm a non-tech-savvy user, and I always get what I need from these.
I mean, I don't want to "learn" linux deeply, I just want to use it.
Of course mine is far from an expert opinion. It is an end user opinion. :D

Detour on the "path less traveled" - Virtualbox for those Windows apps you "can't live without".
1\2 or more of those apps, IF they run at all in Wine, will be older versions and some features may be inhibited.
I have a Slackware14 64bit system with 8 G of RAM and I assign 2G to every VM (including Windows XP) and they run just fine.

Arch is good too. I recently installed it in Virtualbox.
Both Arch and Slackware are meant for competent users of Linux.

I read on here recently that another user has slack14 64 w\Multilib and can only get the 32 bit version of Wine installed.
I was tempted to go for a "netflix-capable" install of Wine but decided I am not "that bored" yet.

Hey thanks again for the info,

I personally like Slack so far seems that everything just works and I love that personally, Arch seems to be good to but, I did not tested yet I will since people seem to be happy with it, but, I line over more to Slack since every person that I know that used Slack always goes back to Slack and I am starting to understand why after using it.

What you mean with making a " "netflix-capable" install of Wine" would you recommend me to do this?? would that fix the rundll32.exe error?? By the way I get that error on 32 bit applications not 64, did not try 64 bit yet??

Thanks again!!

It means I wanted to have Netflix on my desktop, but decided against it.
It has no bearing on your situation and would not fix your issue, sorry about that.

Wine works on Slackware, but not exactly right out of the box. You have to install AlienBOB's multi-lib packages to gain back 32-bit software support on the x86_64 platform, but after you do install multi-lib, Wine works beautifully.

Also, I recommend installing the SlackBuild "laptop-mode-tools" to extend some capabilities of your laptop.

Otherwise, Slackware is a great choice to make for a good quality traditional GNU/Linux distro.

Just for curiosity,

Slackware or Gentoo? Because I am between them 2, I can waste some time setting them up, so, what you recommend and why?

Any advice or recommendation will be appreciate,

Thanks

Although I myself use Slackware I would not recommend it for your situation. This seems to be a production system and for that you should choose the distro you are the most proficient in, not one that you have difficulties to set up correctly. This machine has to be reliable and work at any given time, you have to be able to fix it fast if a problem occurs. If you have to ask if you should go for Slackware or Gentoo and what the differences are it is pretty clear that your knowledge about those distributions is rather limited, which can bring you into troubles if something is not working as it should.
So I recommend to go down the Debian route, as you stated that this is the distro you know the most about and this is essential for a machine you have to rely on.
Regarding your problems with dependencies on Debian, a proper set up Debian Stable system (no third party repositories, no manually installed third party packages) will never have any dependency problems. If you ran into dependency issues it is more likely that you have used Debian Testing or Debian Unstable, or that you have added third party repositories and those were not maintained properly.