I started with SuSe, did a project with Gentoo, tried Mandrake, Ubuntu, Xubuntu, Redhat, Fedora, OpenSuse and finally just kind of ended up with Ubuntu.

It just seems to have better hardware support, I like apt - I've never had dependency problems with it. When I needed to get an operating system installed to get on with working with it it just seemed like the easy option.

That may just be my experience and I may be missing a gem somewhere.

Queue flood of suggestion.

How? Easy. One word - statistics. I don't have to explain how statistics are made do i? Even here you will find plenty threads about other distributions with wine work better for people. Even for me. Yes they work on Ubuntu but bit slower and laggier. Also please. Take Debian net-install and do clean install and compare with clean Ubuntu install. I don't think i will have to talk further which one will work faster because default installation of Debian even with Gnome eats way less resources..again i'm not saying Ubuntu is wrong. I even tend to defend it at some point but since you started speak about how Ubuntu is cooler i just can't not point out truth.

Hi Arcane

Please don't feel I am insulting you, I am really not. This is just good debate between all of us on this forum. I have four kids from 18 to 28 with the same comments and if I had to worry about these comments I would get nowhere in life.
2. So are you saying that an older person who has collectively gained many skills in their lifetime, cannot apply themselves to solve other issues in a skill set they are not familiar with. Here I disagree, because with time and many skills and gain of knowledge, this can be used to adapt and learn a new skill far quicker than when one is younger.
3. I accept you are not one of them, and I nor anyone else has said that you did something wrong. And in my case I have not forgotten that I was young once. I would like my youth back for my physical strength and health, but I would change nothing for what I have gotten from all of my years.

Anyway I think we are off topic here to this thread, in respect to all on this subject.

To be honest, if I were going to recommend a Linux distro to someone, I'd recommend Linux Mint. Granted, it's technically an Ubuntu derivative, but IMO it goes further in terms of what the "typical user" would want: multimedia codecs and Flash support OOB (at least last time I checked ), a Windows-ish default GNOME setup, etc. Personally I think Ubuntu is the most recommended right now simply because it's the most popular distro, not necessarily because it's the "best" (which is highly subjective). I wouldn't recommend it myself, though. IMO while Unity looks pretty (), it's not exactly fast/productive: if you don't use the search bar at all (and I'm sure plenty of new users don't/won't), you have to wade through a bunch of icons in the full-screen "dash" menu to get to the application you're looking for, if it's not already pinned to the sidebar/dock thing. Plus, there's the familiarity factor; people coming over from Windows will probably be expecting a GUI much like what they're used to…Unity is almost nothing like that (if anything, it's more of a Mac ripoff ).

Arcane

This was the original theme title of this post "Do you think ubuntu is the most recommmended linux distro ?". As you mentioned about searching around on the web, by doing that you are collecting statistics, and Distrowatch is a statistical site. We are arguing on this post, and voting that Ubuntu is not a great distro, but statistically it is outside of LinuxQuestions, that is why it is on the top in DistroWatch.


You are taking words out of my mouth. I never said Ubuntu was cool, ever in any of my posts, and I know of the issues with it, yet I and many still like to use it. Plain and simply for everyday use, it is OK.

Yes i am saying it and and i have proof. Proof is around you in real life. Not only regarding to IT proffesion. For example i know people who are very very good at repairing cars and other mechanic devices. But with all that they still are "noobish" in computers and electronic stuff, meal cooking(outside basic stuff we learn to survive) so on. Also even if you compare two IT people you need look at their attitude, dedication to want know and keep updated and experience and ability to get job done not just on age which really doesn't matter. If you judge by age it is same like judging book just from it's cover. You need look into it and really look into it before making decision. While i agree that there is age limit like dunno maybe till age 10-16 but afterwards age doesn't matter because starting from that age period those young persons have ability to surpass older people in most areas and most people actually do it.
DistroWatch is not really what should be called statistics. It is pretty close to facts. Why? Because that page is created by actual hits from people. Sure i do know people can bypass ip and use some sort of bots but really? Why would they? Nothing to gain from DW statistics to waste time and resources for.
source
P.S.Almost forgot..before we continue i(and rest of here) would need to know one very important detail - which distro you are using right now?

Please have a look at the Ubuntu part of this forum or the official Ubuntu forums. You will find plenty of users that have difficulties because of bugs that are known for a long time but still not patched, because it is more important to the developers to make a shiny (at least at the surface) new release than fix annoying bugs. Some of those bugs are so relevant that people with very common hardware aren't even able to install Ubuntu. No wonder, with a beta-testing phase of only 2 months. I wouldn't call that solid, and yes, those bugs affect the everyday user. Even their so called LTS was released buggy.
I don't know why I should recommend this OS to a first time user to have a first look at Linux. How should he see that this OS may be better than Windows when the OS recommended to newbies is that buggy? I would rather say (and i have said that before) that this behavior of Canonical is damaging the image of Linux as a whole.

But that are just my two cent, I have recommended Ubuntu for newbies before, but I won't do that anymore, I will rather recommend simplyMepis or Linux Mint. Both are in my eyes much more polished and much more bug-free.

Side-note: if you really want to see a stable, well integrated and almost bug-free distribution you should have a look at Slackware. But I would recommend Slackware for newbies only in very rare cases.

Hi MrCode

This can be added to Ubuntu, but Canonical wanted to build a distro with absolutely free, opensource code, and in the word free, free of copyright. Many of the multimedia codecs and Flash, as far as I know and under correction carry copyright, and has an effect on Mint as making it non-free in the copyright laws of the world. Just like Novell Linux (SuSE, not Open SuSE)

I agree we all want and need many of these add-ons, as at the moment the opensource world does not have a perfect working free coded working equivalent for all of them. Another reason why many of the desktops are GNOME and not KDE, as KDE has some copyright on it, whereas GNOME is covered by GPL. This is the sticky world we live in with copyright.

I'm aware of the patent/copyright restrictions issue WRT multimedia codecs/Flash, I was just mentioning that Mint isn't as strict about not including them as Ubuntu is.

I agree on both these points you make, and your two cents is valid input, that is why we are all members of LinuxQuestions and we can debate on questions posted such as this topic we are posting to. Maybe I have a Guardian Angel, but I have good results with installations on the hardware (which I build and sell myself, no brand boxes) and the install of Ubuntu as a dual install (for the most part while people decide on the switch) with Windows. I've had good results with Fedora and Mandriva as well, and I am watching Linux Mint.

Agreed on Slackware, very stable and powerful, and mainly for the bleeding edge techno's. I am comfortable with it, but I would not even start to recommend this to any newbie.

As far as I know, the only reason KDE wasn't considered free is because it depended on Qt, but now Qt is open-source:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qt_(framework)#Licensing

Correct, but even this small event made the difference of the choice of GNOME and KDE. From what I can read Qt itself is not totally open-source hence this statement on the Debian - news section about copyright on their web site.

quote

KDE losing its dependence upon non-free software.

There are a few scenarios that could lead to this, the most promising one being the Harmony [7] project (an attempt to implement a GPLed replacement for Qt).
unquote

Ubuntu 11.04, Mint and openSuSE all x64, primarily Ubuntu though. I have indicated from my first thread what I use and have used. I run on separate partitions/drives along with Windows 7. I even use Mac-O/S on a old Powemac.

that is the whole issue here,
why was ubuntu your first distro ?