The Distrochooser helps you to find the suitable Linux distribution based on your needs!

There are countless Distros that do not always make it easy to choose the one that best suits each person’s needs and knowledge. This page, through a small test, proposes the Distro or Distros that best fit.

  • FOSS Is Fun@lemmy.mlEnglish
    16·
    10 months ago

    It misses one important choice: “I want to get notified of new releases of the operating system and want to have a graphical upgrade path.”

    Otherwise people just run their no longer supported OS until something stops working (I’ve seen this countless times …), as very few people follow blog posts or social media feeds of their operating system.

    This rules out lots of supposedly “beginner friendly” distributions, such as elementary OS or Linux Mint, as they don’t notify users about the availability of a new distribution release. Elementary OS doesn’t even offer in-place upgrades and requires a reinstallation.

    • splendoruranium@infosec.pubEnglish
      3·
      10 months ago

      Is that just something that’s intrinsically missing from some distros due to technical constraints or is it a regular type of feature the simply hasn’t been implemented (yet) due to… human constraints?

      • FOSS Is Fun@lemmy.mlEnglish
        3·
        10 months ago

        Linux Mint nowadays supports release upgrades, but you have to follow their blog to know when a new major Mint release is out and you have to manually install mintupgrade and do the upgrade.

        So it is definitely not caused by technical constraints, as Mint has implemented the difficult part (providing and testing an upgrade path) already. Notifying the user about a new release upgrade shouldn’t be too difficult? E. g. in the most simple form you could probably preinstall a package that does nothing at first, but receives an update once the next Mint release is out to send a notification to the user to inform about a new Mint release.

        When it comes to elementary OS, I think they could support in-place upgrades, as they properly use metapackages (unlike Mint, which marks most packages as manually installed and doesn’t really utilise automatically installed packages and metapackages in a way that you would expect on a Ubuntu-based distro), but they probably don’t want to allocate / don’t have the resources to test an official upgrade path.

        But again, I don’t understand why it is so difficult for elementary OS to at least provide a simple notification to the user that a new version is out. Even if the users have to reinstall, it is critical to inform them that their OS is about to become end of life. You know, people do things like online banking on their computers …

        It’s the first thing I check with every distribution and if it doesn’t have an EOL / upgrade notification, it is immediately out.

  • iusearchbtw@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
    7·
    10 months ago

    Why does this quiz have so many fuckin distributions? If a newbie is looking for a distro to install, why would you ever recommend anything more niche than Ubuntu/Mint, or Endeavour if they’re interested in bleeding edge? I answered the questions as though I was new to Linux and got a massive list of every Ubuntu and Fedora derivative, with Manjaro sprinkled in for good measure.

    • Zerush@lemmy.mlOP
      3·
      10 months ago

      Look at the colors, which shows which distros ajust best o worse to your results, with the correspondin descriptions which match your answers in the test. Better to have a list to choice between 10 or 20 distros than between several hundreds which exist, impossible to know all of these. This large quantity, on the one hand, is an advantage, because everyone can find exactly the OS they need for their purposes, but it can also result in a problem of compatibility for the development of software and availability of certain drivers.

  • DarkThoughts@kbin.social
    2·
    10 months ago

    I prefer a distribution which is supported by game publishers.

    ?! Is that supposed to tell the quiz that I’m looking for something to play games on? Or why should I care what the odd publisher may “support”?

    • raptir@lemdro.idEnglish
      7·
      10 months ago

      This site was made by someone who was active on Reddit a few years back. It was made back when Steam specifically provided support for Ubuntu and no other distros.

    • Zerush@lemmy.mlOP
      1·
      10 months ago

      You can skip this question if you are not interested in playing, but each user has other needs, some distros serve as a platform for games and others not at all.

  • velox_vulnus@lemmy.ml
    2·
    10 months ago

    It does not have Guix for some reason, when it is almost the same as NixOS? Also, the options can be improved to differentiate between a containerized distro and a reproducible one.

  • wviana@lemmy.eco.br
    1·
    10 months ago

    Arch user. Just had a really good experience with Debian on old 32bits hardware. The survey suggested Debian. I’m thinking if I shouldn’t use Debian everywhere instead of Arch everywhere.

  • taladar@sh.itjust.works
    1·
    10 months ago

    They should really split that systemd thing into a separate question, that felt wrong in the install packages one.

    • Zerush@lemmy.mlOP
      2·
      10 months ago

      I don’t know this Distro, but if this is what you like there is nothing to say. In the end this is what matters, that you like it.

    • Zerush@lemmy.mlOP
      1·
      10 months ago

      Some distros are less intuitive to use than others, apart from also having particularities that others do not have and that require reading the manual, at least in part, also for ‘pros’ who are not familiar with the specific distro. Ubuntu, Q4OS or Mint, easy to use, are not the same as Parrot, Kali (both are for IT experts), 4MLinux (very lightweight, but not so easy to handle as it seems) or Gentoo (among others), which are certainly not made for newbies.

      • myliltoehurts@lemm.ee
        1·
        10 months ago

        I understand that, but just because I’m capable of working with a less friendly system doesn’t mean it’s a good thing. If anything I’d still list it as a negative aspect that it requires more knowledge and research.

        If there was a question with an answer like “I’m looking for a challenge” it’d make sense that it’s listed as a positive.

  • extant@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    I have been thinking about trying to use Linux for my daily driver again and have been mulling over which distro to use and I kind of narrowed it down, and then I took your quiz and now I’ve got like 60 more options. 😒

    • Zerush@lemmy.mlOP
      1·
      10 months ago

      The first results of the test are mostly the best for you, it is ordered from the best match to the least

  • 1984@lemmy.today
    1·
    10 months ago

    It picked arch for me, and I’ve been on arch for like 10 years, so I rate this distro chooser nicely.