Back to Disros we're not Comfortable With: Mageia and SUSE in Virtual

[buster]

Mike wrote quite accurately in a different thread:

"... once again reminded about why Debian/Ubuntu-based distros are so good. All of the software I ever need for it is either in their repositories or they make a distro and version-specific version of it that just works."

But most in the club have used this family of distros almost exclusively for what, 5 to 10 years? We're familiar with this family the same way as we are with Peterborough, and we all know how to get from one part of the city to another easily. Wouldn't necessarily be true in Oakville/Burlington.

It occurred to me that others use different branches of the Linux family for years quite happily. It seems doubtful that they don't recognize how broken their distro is. Or that they are really thick. Far more likely they are familiar with the distro and to them the fixes needed are really simple.

Soooo... I installed in virtual a distro I trashed back in October, and decided to learn it. Welcome back

MAGEIA.

The install is easier than I remembered it, especially now that I'm paying attention. Using it is easier than I remembered it, and it's quick and pleasant, and I really like how the mouse glides over the menu parts and opens things without having to click all the time. Solved the drag and drop between host and guest with a tiny bit of research. By the way discovered that if you use Konqueror for Rarbg and TPB, Ktorrent opens in the same window when a magnetic link is clicked. Really slick.

Conclusion: very nice distro.

So I also tested SUSE Leap 15 and on Jason's recommendation, KUBUNTU, as well a FEDORA.

Same thing. Work with them awhile and they get easy (with the exception of Fedora). Kubuntu is very good as Jason said, but I prefer the menu in SUSE and Mageia because a hovering mouse opens everything without clicking. Fedora is unfortunately based on Gnome, which I more than hate. I did try, but it's like dealing with a raw Ubuntu.

Of the three, graphics are best in SUSE when in games, and the update in SUSE doesn't require a password, which makes sense to me.

At this point I had Mint, Lite, Suse, Kubuntu, Fedora and Mageia in virtual. Now I have only Suse, a lovely, so far, system.

[Jason]

Kubuntu is very good as Jason said, but I prefer the menu in SUSE and Mageia because a hovering mouse opens everything without clicking.

It does for me, too but I think I may have changed this from the default. Right-click on the application button (K-button, start button? don't know what to call it, it's what you click to open the application menu initially) and then choose Alternatives and then choose Application Menu. Now it should popup automatically without having to click.

[fox]

Glad to hear you're trying openSUSE. I have openSUSE 15 leap KDE installed on my home iMac on bare metal, but as a secondary distro. I enjoy playing with it, but I do find that it doesn't work as well as Ubuntu on certain apps. The best example is MS Office 2010, running on Crossover. I don't know why, but it's more temperamental and the fonts are less attractive on openSUSE. But the biggest problem I ran into was that openSUSE can't detect my remote printer on an Apple Time Capsule (wifi), which Ubuntu has no problem detecting. One or two other things like that really make me appreciate Ubuntu and as a result, I doubt if I would ever use a non-Debian distro as my go-to operating system. Interestingly enough, one non-Debian-based distro that I have had good luck with is Arch, which is still installed on my laptop.

[buster]

Jason wrote: " Right-click on the application button (K-button, start button? don't know what to call it, it's what you click to open the application menu initially) and then choose Alternatives and then choose Application Menu. Now it should popup automatically without having to click."

Are you 100% sure of that Jason? If it's true I'll give it another try, because it is an awesome distro.

[Jason]

Yep, I tried it. But you could always try it as a live version if you're not convinced. You still have to click to open the Applications menu but after that, for each category of program you just hover it and it pops up to the right.

[buster]

I shall give it a try Jason. And I used the installed distros for quite awhile during my tests, and I think it's true that most distros, like people, are pleasant as you get to know them. Not all of course, like Gentoo or Fedora  . There are always exceptions.