Any tips for a new distro would be appreciated

I'm not a Linux newbie, but I feel that I might as well be: I have not changed distro in about 10 years.

So anything recent is new to me.

But I have a new box here, just waiting for a new installation...

So I thought I might ask for some advice before deciding anything.

I have been using Kubuntu for about 7 years. Before that, Suse.

My main use for the computer is business, office work: I don't doubt that most distros are capable of 90% of that out of the box.

I would like to use Firefox and Thunderbird and FileZilla.

I would like a long-term-support kind of distro.
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For me, one of the best things about KDE is the file management/file browsing with Konqueror.

Also, KDE has always helped me migrate to new hardware with no interuption to my work.

But on the other hand, KDE annoys me: comes with a lot of stuff I don't need, have never used, don't like - and I think of it as bloat.
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For recreation I like playing and recording music. To me that just means that applications such as Jack, Audacity, Ardour can be used. And a real-time kernel.
Again, things that I suppose most distros can manage.
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So what the heck am I worried about...?
Or
So much for my likes - maybe the real issue is my fears...?

I greatly fear the desktops/interfaces I see lately on the home pages for Ubuntu and Kubuntu (and some others).

For one thing, I like my desktop to be blank. (A menu bar is acceptable. Same goes for a menu on right-click.)

But I greatly fear a desktop that cannot be made blank.

I WILL scream with frustration if I see a desktop that has anything on it that cannot easily be removed.

I suppose that's what's really on my mind: I fear the 'helpful' interfaces.
But it seems this is the way some distros are going.

I was just looking at the 'Take the tour' site for Ubuntu.

In the 'browse files' area there was a menu/dialogue box with:
Home
Desktop
Documents
Downloads
Music
Pictures
[Etc...]

This is a horror to me: my files are not organised in that way. My life is not categorised in that way.

I know, it sounds like a rant, but I'm serious about this.

As I mentioned, a MOST important thing for me is a good, configurable, file manager (like Konqueror).
With an expandable tree of directories on one side and file details in the main pane.

And I DO mean details, NOT icons. NEVER icons. I like to READ the file names.

Of course I like a menu of installed applications.
But honestly, I have very often preferred to use ICEWM - even although I needed to edit my own menu - rather than accept the default menus that come with some desktop environments.

Anyway, as I said: any pointers would be gratefully accepted.
I suppose the 'desktop environment' is my main concern.

And feel free to scold me for my old-fashioned ways.

1) Redhat Enterprise

2) Debian

3) Ubuntu

4) Fedora

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Thanks veerain.

I am attracted to Debian....

If you want a low-latency kernel, it's easiest to simply install a Linux that's actually intended for music. I recommend Ubuntu studio: here's my review of an old version.
http://www.linuxquestions.org/review...page/15/sort/7
The latest will be based on the long-term-support version of Ubuntu and good for 5 years. The desktop is Xfce which will never develop in the ways you (and I) dislike; as one of developers once said, its aim is to do the job without being in your face or getting under your feet.

Most distros will create folders like like the ones you mention for Ubuntu, but that doesn't mean you can't change them. My system has folders like astrology, finance, linguistics, philosophy, and religion. Of course, if you're installing on an existing computer, you can keep the old /home (if you had the presence of mind to give it its own partition, that is).

Any decent file manager, like Xfce's Thunar, can display as you (and I) want.

Anything not Gnomish can create a clean desktop, like mine
http://img198.imageshack.us/img198/8290/1am8.png

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A good friend uses Ubuntu Studio to record music and likes it a lot -- he agrees with me (and, it seems, you both) that modern desktop environments are annoying and likes XFCE (I'm a fan also and use it on my Linux installs).
I would suggest plain Debian with XFCE onto which you could install the apps you require though I don't use it myself as I prefer newer versions of applications.
I thought I read somewhere (linked to by above mentioned friend) that real time kernels were no longer needed for audio work and had a feeling that Ubuntu Studio may no longer ship with a real time kernel?

well you have been in the debian camp

how about moving to " the dark side -- we have cookies "

the RPM camp

while RHEL is a bit conservative

OpenSUSE is nice

it has a bit of a longer support cycle that fedora and not so " cutting edge"

Whatever distro you use, you can install and use the desktop environment/window manager of your choice. The default is simply the default choice of the distro maintainers (Slackware comes with six DE/WMs out-of-the-box--you choose your default at time of install, but you can change that choice at any time).

Given the preferences you express about the appearance of your desktop, you might want to take a look at the Fluxbox window manager. It is very plain upon first install, but you can do wonderful things with it. You can see some of my Fluxbox desktops here.

Fluxbox is almost always in the repos.

That means that the default is the one that works. Try CentOS or Fedora with anything but Gnome or KDE, and you need to install extra software with yum as you get an unusable graphical tool, and none of the configuration tools have any help available. Every time I've tried SUSE with Xfce, there've been bits missing. And so on.

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Many thanks people for the up-to-date information.

I installed latest Ubuntu LTS in the weekend. Thought I should have a look.

Reverted to old-fashioned version of Gnome desktop pretty quickly.

Spent two days trying to get the nvidia driver to check in and play nice. Nearly there, apart from getting my preferred resolution.

Apart from that....

I noticed another VERY big issue:
Once I plugged in my old hard drives I immediately saw that I needed to re-organise ownerships and permissions.
(This involves thousands of files.)
I was wondering why the ownerships were all very odd, then I assumed that old User ID numbers were the issue.

Anyway, I have negotiated this task before, but THIS time...

I became aware that in Ubuntu - as far as I can tell right now - there is no easy (graphical) way to check users, user ID numbers, groups that users belong to.... and change permissions on files.

Honestly, at present I don't think I could do it on the command line - too many drives, too many files.
In the past, when I used KDE, there was an admin module that made it very easy.

Nautilus will not help me: tends to crash on changing ownerships - no matter how much sudo -i, gksudo, etc.

If anybody knows of a tool for that kind of admin...

I would have thought that using chown and chmod with the "-r" switch (recursive) would be a lot quicker and easier than trying to chanmge permission through the command line.

Thanks Frank,
I'm happy to see that Fluxbox is still an option in the latest Ubuntu repositories.

Meanwhile, I installed Konqueror tonight to use as a file browser: solved some problems with setting ownerships on the 20 years worth of files I'm migrating.

See, I THOUGHT the clean desktop was my main priority - until I saw all those old files I need to keep.
(Very important: business, accounts and so on... )

Darn, I won't feel right until this machine is just like I want it to be and I'm back to business as usual.

Thanks 273,
I must admit I buckled under the strain of thinking about it.

But what do you mean by "...easier than through the command line?..." Is there another way?

FWIW my worry, now that the system has seen various users and groups on the old drives, is about tidying that up.

Seems to me a graphical rendition of all the users and groups would be handy.

Heck, if I can't find something like that I might need to sketch it out on paper in order to get it into my head.
But it seems to me that should not be necessary in modern times.

Sorry, I messed up I meant easier than through the GUI.

Darn. I was hoping you knew an easy route.

I find a GUI easier. I don't think I could use the command line without spending an hour or two - or more - studying/remembering the syntax.
Sure, I have used it before, but it certainly doesn't come naturally to me.

Then another hour or two studying the business of how devices are referred to within the system.

Then still, I need to get into my head some notion of all the users in the system and what groups they belong to.

Mount your external drive — let's call the mount point /media/thing. Then
sudo chown -R your_user_name /media/thing
does the job.

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