Setting up Linux on a desktop or laptop system, part 1: choosing a Linux distribution and a desktop environment

Posted on August 31, 2020October 13, 2020 by Frederik

Which Linux distribution?

The most widely used distribution is Ubuntu. Other popular desktop distributions are Linux Mint, Fedora, OpenSUSE Tumbleweed and Manjaro. Personally I prefer to use Debian, not only on servers but also on desktop systems, but this distribution does require more manual work to set up on a desktop system, so it is not the easiest choice if you are new to Linux. In that case I would recommend some of the Ubuntu variants or Linux Mint.

Choose a recent version of your Linux distribution of choice. If you use Ubuntu, install the latest LTS version (20.04 Focal Fossa at the time of writing) and if you encounter problems related to hardware support, consider using the latest non-LTS version (20.10 Groovy Gorilla will be available end of October 2020. You can download daily builds if you want to test this version in development). I recommend Debian users to install the testing version on recent hardware.

Which desktop environment?

You will have to choose which desktop environment you want to use on your Linux system. Depending on your distribution, you make this choice before downloading the ISO, or during the installation.

The most widely used desktop environments are GNOME, KDE Plasma, Cinnamon and XFCE. The first three desktop environments get updates and improvements more often than XFCE and are more complete: for this reason I would recommend one of these. XFCE on the other hand is interesting as a lightweight desktop for older hardware.

KDE is very customizable, but the many configuration options can be overwhelming at times. GNOME is less customizable and tries to deliver a user-friendly modern desktop out of the box. If you want a simple clean desktop with a more traditional, Windows- or macOS-like desktop, then you can consider Cinnamon.

In the next table you will find links to the different editions of popular distributions. Some distributions have a default or preferred desktop, one in which they invest most work. I have set these in bold.

	GNOME	KDE Plasma	Cinnamon	XFCE
Ubuntu	Ubuntu Desktop	Kubuntu	Ubuntu Cinnamon Remix	Xubuntu
Linux Mint	no installer available	no installer available	Linux Mint Cinnamon	Linux Mint XFCE
Fedora	Fedora Workstation	Fedora KDE Plasma	Fedora Cinnamon	Fedora XFCE
OpenSUSE Tumbleweed	You choose your desktop during the installation: OpenSUSE Tumbleweed installation ISOs. Cinnamon can only be added after the installation.
Manjaro	Manjaro GNOME	Manjaro KDE Plasma	Manjaro Cinnamon	Manjaro XFCE
Debian	You choose your desktop during the installation: Debian Testing installer

If you like KDE Plasma, you can also consider installing the KDE Neon distribution. It is an Ubuntu LTS with the latest KDE packages installed. This way it provides a more up to date and more standard KDE experience than Kubuntu. However it misses a lot of standard non-KDE application, which you will have to install yourself afterwards.

If you want to get a feeling of these distributions and desktops, you can test them out in a web browser on the website distrotest.net. All in all, I would recommend not spending too much time on choosing your distribution and desktop. Pick one of the beginner-friendly distributions and try it. If you really don’t like it, it is easy enough to install another distribution.

Why prefer Mandriva over another distribution?

Posted on May 1, 2009May 1, 2009 by Frederik

Yesterday someone asked on a Dutch website the same question which comes back on sites like Slashdot every time a new Mandriva release is announced: what is the the advantage of Mandriva above other distributions like Ubuntu, OpenSUSE and Fedora.

This made me think and so I wrote down a couple of reasons why I use Mandriva on my desktop systems.

10 advantages of Mandriva above other Linux distributions

The default graphical theme in Mandriva looks much better than Ubuntu’s brown mess.
All graphical configuration tools are centralized in the Mandriva Control Centre.
Mandriva has some unique configuration tools, such as msec which permits you to change advanced security settings from the GUI.
Mandriva makes it very easy to install 32 bit libraries and applications on the x86_64 version. In Ubuntu some of the more important 32 bit libraries can be found in the ia32-libs packages, but if you need something else which is not in there for whatever reason, things become more complicated and messy: you can for example extract the libraries by hand from the 32 bit deb package and install them in /usr/lib32, or you’ll have to create a complete 32 bit chroot. In Mandriva you can simply install packages from the 32 bit distribution on the x86_64 release by means of the standard console or GUI installation tools.
(shameless plug) The program menu is much nicer if you have installed KDE and GNOME together on your system (in Ubuntu and other distributions you will get very long menus containing lots of KDE and GNOME applications mixed together.
Mandriva’s booting times is about the fastest possible for a generic distribution thanks to Speedboot
KDE as shipped by Mandriva is generally a bit more stable and polished than in Ubuntu
Mandriva’s GNOME corresponds more to the default upstream GNOME than for example in OpenSUSE (e.g. by default it does not use that messy Slab menu)
Very flexible graphical installer in the Free and Powerpack editions for people who want a more complete and custom installation than the one from a standard live cd
Mandriva’s development community is very open and accessible, eg. via IRC and mailing lists. If you do a little bit of effort, it’s pretty easy to become a Mandriva package maintainer yourself and to integrate your contributions yourself in the distribution.

Some disadvantages of Mandriva

Security updates are sometimes a bit later than other distributions and for some packages even completely missing. It has to be said that these are mostly not too important security problems and I’m not aware of any problems this has caused for anyone in practice. Also bugfix updates for some reported problems are sometimes late or not done at all.
While the graphical themes are much better than Ubuntu’s in my opinion, I still think they cannot beat the upstream KDE and GTK+ themes.
The Mandriva configuration tools sometimes have annoying bugs or do not have the best looks possible.

Personally, I consider Mandriva and Debian as the best distributions available. I think Ubuntu is overhyped a lot and does not offer much (if anything?) you cannot do with Debian. I also think Debian’s distribution model consisiting of the Stable, Testing and Unstable distributions is great and makes it possible to have a pretty stable and “rolling” distribution with fairly up to date software at any time. However, the fact that I can directly contribute my own improvements to Mandriva and the fact that installing 32 bits stuff on x86_64 is dead easy, make tthat Mandriva is still my preferred choice on desktop systems.

Anyway, the choice is up to you!

First looks at OpenSUSE 10.3

Posted on October 8, 2007 by Frederik

I downloaded the OpenSUSE 10.3 DVD to test it out and compare it with Mandriva 2008.0. I was interested in reviewing the current state of this distribution and maybe also get some inspiration for improvements I can propose for Mandriva 2008.1.

The artwork in OpenSUSE is very nice. There are some interesting ideas we should really consider in Mandriva: possibility to read the release notes during the installation of packages, some interesting yast modules (the firwall module is way better than Mandriva’s),… But I discovered already a lot of problems by just quickly testing it out in Virtualbox: the installer (actually yast) just crashes completely when detecting the network configuration, there was no possibility to use a 1024×768 resolution in Virtualbox, some strange choices of default applications (especially in GNOME: Brasero is currently still a bit too buggy, and Skencil is extremely ugly),…

So currently I have a strong feeling that Mandriva 2008.0 will be a better and especially more stable distribution than OpenSUSE 10.3. I’ll continue testing out OpenSUSE a bit and noting my remarks, and I’ll probably install it on an old laptop I have here, to see how it works on real hardware. I’ll do the same with Mandriva 2008.0 and I’ll maybe post a review comparing Mandriva 2008.0 and OpenSUSE 10.3 (and maybe Ubuntu Gutsy too?). Well, time will tell.

By the time you read this, there is much chance that Mandriva 2008.0 final is out and downloadable. Go check the Mandriva download page now to check it out!