Besides size and looks, nowadays is there any significant differences between distros that might make one “better” than the other?
Besides size and looks, nowadays is there any significant differences between distros that might make one “better” than the other?
Also the installer and compatibility. For years I recommended Ubuntu over others because while the rest was six of one, half a dozen of the other, the installer was pretty much guaranteed to work on everything from the most standard White Box PC to the most finnicky Thinkpad.
Whereas virtually everything else I’d tried was hit or miss - worked with some hardware, had major problems on others. As an example I recall five years ago trying to get Fedora to run on an old Dell laptop, and I had to disable the built-in AMD graphics in favor of the Intel integrated in the BIOS otherwise it just wouldn’t display anything.
(Right now I don’t recommend Ubuntu, but it’s only because they went too far with the snap thing.)
People forget the importance of the installer and how it can mean whether you spend 15 minutes installing and have everything set up, or whether it takes hours to find the right set of hacks and BIOS settings, and even then you’re left with something where you’re playing with Wifi drivers for the next six months.
Excellent point! This is especially important for laptops. If you are planning to install Linux on a laptop, I highly recommend searching for your specific model to find a distro with the correct drivers. Trackpads, wi-fi, and power management can be really finicky.