Linux Distros best for beginners

[buster]

"Ubuntu MATE Is Now An Official Ubuntu Flavor"

http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2015/02/ubuntu-mate-is-now-an-official-ubuntu-flavor

And Wikipedia notes this as well. Happened  in Feb 2015

[Jason]

"Ubuntu MATE Is Now An Official Ubuntu Flavor"

http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2015/02/ubuntu-mate-is-now-an-official-ubuntu-flavor

And Wikipedia notes this as well. Happened  in Feb 2015

Interesting. I think I had read this and just noted that it wasn't an official Canonical project.

Is Ubuntu MATE an official Canonical project?
No, it is an Ubuntu community project.

But then lower down it also says:

Is Ubuntu MATE an official Ubuntu “flavour”?
Ubuntu MATE 15.04 and onward are official Ubuntu flavours.
Ubuntu MATE 14.04 and Ubuntu MATE 14.10 are unofficial builds.

Source: https://ubuntu-mate.org/faq/

I"m assuming they're saying that Canonical doesn't direct them but Canonical is okay with them? This sounds like only something that the developers would understand the nuance of. I don't know how it affects the project for us end-users.

[Jason]

Though it's not that obvious to find (have to go right to the bottom), there is a page for Ubuntu "flavours" here and Ubuntu MATE is on so I'll remove the "spin-off" language. Thanks for the info, Harry.

https://www.ubuntu.com/download/ubuntu-flavours

[buster]

Something else in favour of Ubuntu mate:

If you check for updates through Software Updater, it finds the security and important needed updates and lets you proceed without a password. When you try to add software in general, because you are altering the system, you must enter your password.

That seems a really good compromise for someone learning the role of an administrator in Linux, as opposed to the Windows environment where the user is automatically root.

[Jason]

That's interesting. Is that only when you ran the updater yourself? I tried that way and you're right there, no password required. I think it still asks you for your password when it runs automatically though but maybe not. Will have to wait for it to come up again

[buster]

OK. After many days have passed the Oracle has spoken to me and said

#1. Linux Mint Cinnamon
#2. Linux Lite
#3. Ubuntu Mate

Or any order of these three.

[Jason]

I have all those on the list. So that's cool Come out and have a coffee with us tonight, Harry!

[buster]

Late in the game, but MXLinux is really easy. Quick and nice to work with. But I must admit that easy for us isn't easy for a newcomer. Still, it's as easy as Lite, Mint, and far easier than Ubuntu Gnome, at least to me.

As a side issue, curious to know if anyone, except intellectual Mike, uses Gnome. Or Fedora for that matter. The key word is 'uses', as in not just experiments with, or plays with.

[fox]

"Intellectual Mike" has tried Fedora on several occasions, something between "playing" and "using". I find it fairly easy to use (though not as easy as the other distros listed here), but I don't see any advantages of using it over Ubuntu, especially since both are gnome distros. Stock gnome, which is more or less what you get with Fedora, is too bare-bones for me. The gnome customizations done by Ubuntu are more up my alley, and have actually led me away from Unity, which I was using until 18.04 came out.

[fox]

A new article just came out with best Linux distros for beginners; read it here. Has the usual suspects (Mint, Ubuntu, Elementary) and a few that are on some lists (Peppermint, Solus, Zorin). The one that surprised me most was Manjaro. I would never put a rolling release distro on a beginner list, no matter how user-friendly.

[Jason]

I'd tend to agree although I note that they mention in the write-up that this is controversial. Never heard of Solus for beginners before.

[fox]

I tried Solus about a year ago. It's pretty easy to install, run and maintain. The Budgie desktop is intuitive. The only issue with Solus as far as I am concerned is that, being an independent distro, the repositories are small compared to the majors. That would be a problem for me because I use some specialized software in my research, but most of the consumer programs are either installed or available in their repos. Also, their devs seem quite amenable to packaging software that users request.

[Jason]

You might have forgotten that I demonstrated Solus at a meeting probably a couple of years ago now. I'm just not sure about recommending it for beginners because I'm thinking the support community is going to be smaller since it's independently developed. For example, with Ubuntu-based distros, you can get help from the Ubuntu community, so if you're using Linux Mint, you can likely get help from there if you can't get it with the Mint community.

[fox]

I don't know if that's true or not with Solus; it might depend on what you need help with. When I requested that an app be packaged for use in Solus, I got a pretty quick and positive response. But that doesn't invalidate the concern I would have about recommending Solus to a beginner.

[buster]

Downloaded and tried Xubuntu, the latest. Can't see using it ahead of Linux Lite or MX linux which are very polished. Surprised actually. But the other two are better xfce desktops I think.

And tested Kubuntu, same release, and felt the same way when comparing to other Plasma distros, such as Mageia, tho maybe Mageia is not for beginners. Have trouble with the menu. Tried to make it open up with a mouse hover but no luck. If you don't mind some qlicks at some stages it's clear and easy.

At the moment, for beginners, impressed with deepin, Lite, MX, and Mint Cinnamon (unless of course Bill objects!).