As before our focus is on typical desktop and Internet usage, seeking an open-source alternative to Windows. We value a good out-of-the-box experience, polished desktop design and usability over other features.

The winner: openSUSE 11.0

openSUSE 11.0 is now at release candidate phase, with final version just around the corner, but it is already safe to say that this is THE distribution for the year 2008. openSUSE has put a lot of effort to KDE v4 implementation, but unfortunately the next generation KDE still feels premature and doesn’t seem to offer real additional value to for the end-user. I always prefer KDE over Gnome, so it was kind of a disappointment. Luckily openSUSE has the best implementation of Gnome, and the familiar KDE v3.5 is also available on the DVD.

Since the version 10.3 openSUSE has updated and improved the applications, now ships in installable live CDs and has dramatically improved the package management – both backend and the GUI. In all desktop versions everything looks very professional, and well laid out. Compiz 3D-desktop now works out-of-the-box in most configurations and overall the performance seems to be top notch. openSUSE 11 has everything that an average desktop users needs, outstanding configuration tools in YaST and plenty of features for office or corporate networks. OpenSUSE community offers one-click solutions for proprietary formats. The  community is very strong in every way, and the availability of packages and backports is excellent, so this distro has a pretty long life cycle. openSUSE is totally desktop ready and actully quite far ahead of the competition in many ways.

The 2nd: PCLinuxOS 2008 MiniMe

Some may see PCLOS as a strange selection for the 2nd place, but after plenty of consideration and using it trough the winter I just have to give it a lot of credit. PCLOS 2008 MiniMe is sort of a prologue for the upcoming full 2008 edition. It ships with a bare bone KDE v3.5 installation, with no additional applications – the user pulls the needed apps (Mozilla, OpenOffice and so on) from the repos using the familiar Synaptic package management. As a result the user has a very streamlined desktop system only with apps that he wants or needs. As such the MiniMe might not be the best choice if you are looking for your very first Linux as one has to understand the basics of Linux package management, even though it is a very simple process.

What makes PCLOS stand out is the stability and longevity. For me this has been the most realiable Linux distribution. It uses a rolling release strategy, so you do not have to upgrade or reinstall every six months, as the system stays always current just by applying the updates using Synaptic. PCLOS is somewhat conservative in updates, so the stability has remained good. On the other hand it seems that PCLOS is slightly lagging behind in Linux development and cannot me considered as a bleeding edge distro. The key applications are up-to-date but for example the kernel is typically couple of version behind. PCLOS is forked from Mandriva, but they have not systematically synchronized with Mandriva releases since their departure.

The 3rd: Mandriva One 2008.1 Spring

If you know absolutely nothing about Linux, but you wish to try the better operating system, then Mandriva’s latest is a top contender. It comes with excellent hardware support (best in my experience), beautifully designed desktop and easy to use Windows-like configuration tools. Mandriva is a KDE v3.5 oriented distro, but the Gnome implementation is decent as well. The downside of Mandriva is that the life cycle of the releases seem pretty short, and in my opinion the community is not very strong compared to Suse or Ubuntu. It is kind of a shame that Mandriva doesn’t get the attention it deserves, since in many ways it is a better system for the Windows refugees than the over hyped Ubuntu.

The 4th: Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron

To me the Ubuntu just continues not to impress. As usual it comes with the ugly brown looks and quite spartan Gnome desktop. Also my subjective opinion is that the quality and stability of Ubuntu releases has decreased in the past two or three generations. I think the decision to ship an updated 8.04.1 version later this year, which should be “enterprise quality”, is a clear indication that this release has some rough edges.

So why is Ubuntu high on the 4th place then? First of all it is still a decent distribution, that is quite easy to use and supports a lot of hardware, even though it is not worth the hype and is showcases nothing exceptional. The Hardy Heron release has some serious edge over the competition: It is a so called LTS (Long Term Support) release with 3 years of updates for the desktop edition and 5 years for the server! This offer is simply unmatched by any recent desktop distribution. The LTS status of this release will also guarantee that there will be many Ubuntu Hardy based distributions on the market, most notable perhaps being the Linux Mint which corrects many of the faults complained here regarding the look and feel of the desktop. Besides the long life-cycle, the popularity and media attention of Ubuntu has made it very popular, which means that it has the strongest community, with user groups in many countries. In the non-commercial software world, the support of a local community is priceless.

Final words

That wraps it up for the spring of 2008 – openSUSE wins, second time in a row. Obviously there are many other potential distributions out there and actually the amount of choice is almost overwhelming. We try to help the people that are looking for an alternative to Windows, and in our opinion these are the most potential choices for that purpose. They all have their higlights and weaknesses, but overall the offering of openSUSE seems most complete.

I have been using computers since the early 80’s and they have been PCs since 1987. I am rather advanced Windows users, and I have used all of them extensively, except for the new Windows Vista which I have barely tried. I have always had an eye for Linux and I had my first touch with it the early 90’s and I have spoken with Mr. Linus Torvalds himself on the phone. I have tried Linux distros as a desktop every now and then over the years, but my experiments have always failed and I have returned to Windows. So I am a real novice in Linux, although I have learned a LOT during this year, even though I know my way around computers very well in general. I will not go in-depth in this article. I simply want to bring out my personal and totally subjective overlook of the currect desktop Linux distributions.

The best Linux distributions for the year 2007:

The winner: openSUSE 10.3

openSUSE is closest to a commercial quality operating system among all Linux distributions. From installer to first boot it has professional design, visuals and it offers a good balance in between the ease of use and configurability. openSUSE has traditionally been considered as an KDE oriented distribution, but interestingly they also have the best Gnome offering as of today. No matter which you pick, you will get very pleasant visuals out-of-the-box. YaST2 offers good tools for various configuration and administration tasks, and make a Windows refugee feel like home. One-click-Install adds simplicity to certain installation procedures, such as Compiz Fusion or restricted formats.

However openSUSE is not perfect. The packet management (Zypper) is much better than the old ZMD (openSUSE 10.2 and older), but still a pain in the butt in comparison to Apt and Synaptic. it is slow, the GUI is awkward and dependency issues can occur. Luckily one can install Smart package management as well, which seems to be a much better choice. The release also has/had a handful of nasty bugs, but updates are rolling at a good pace. The installation seems to have issues with computers that have both IDE and SATA soft RAID hard drives installed – it does detect and even suggests mount points for Windows RAID partitions, but for some reason the installation of GRUB fails. If someone knows a fix for this, other that disconnecting hard drives or disabling SATA from BIOS, please let me know. I think it is a real show stopper and such an error should not occur in a stable release.

The 2nd: Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon

In many aspects the strength of Ubuntu does not seem to be the distribution itself, but the popularity of this distribution, which results in a lively community. If you have any issues with your setup, then Google is your friend and you can be almost certain to find a solution. Ubuntu is so popular that at least all of my issues have been reproduced by someone else and help was found – I can not say the same for any other distribution!

In general Ubuntu works well out of the box. It uses a very basic implementation of Gnome combined with an ugly orange/brown theme. For some reason I always find the font rendering of Ubuntu worse than with openSUSE (KDE or Gnome), even with MS Fonts installed. Ubuntu offers an excellent and well working starting point, but I presume that a lot of people want to change some things to make it look and work better. Luckily in the Linux world one can change and modify just about everything as one sees fit.

In terms of software quality, the Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy seems to be a bit rushed. I was able to find a number of issues in the desktop environment itself, and the developers have been rolling out updates very frequently (which is a good thing). If you rule out the benefits of popularity, I really couldn’t figure out what is the Ubuntu hype all about? It is a good distribution for sure, but what really made it stand out from the crowd?

The 3rd: Mandriva One 2008

Mandriva, formerly known as Mandrake, was one of the first distributions with a mission to make Linux a user friendly desktop environment. This distro has a long and colourful background with it’s ups and downs, but since 2007.x versions, they have been making a strong comeback.

For me the hardware detection of Mandriva was superior. It installed worked on (old) PCs that Ubuntu would not boot on and it is the ONLY distribution to correctly configure Compiz 3D desktop on my Thinkpad (ATI RV-250) out-of-the-box. It has nice configuration tools for managing the computer – not as extensive as openSUSE YaST, but very user friendly. The over all look and feel of the operating system is clean and polished – quite professional. I have only used the KDE edition, but based on what I have read their Gnome offering is decent as well. So in many aspects Mandriva seems much better than Ubuntu!

But the issue is that while Ubuntu has a great community support, and openSUSE has some (and they are working on to improve), the user community of Mandriva is almost non-existing. If you have problems, then who do you ask if nobody uses it? Well of course there are a lot of Mandriva users, and even commercial customers, but really the difference is evident when you are on a search for information. Also the software selection and availability is much smaller than with the above two (especially Ubuntu). Mandriva has also slipped some bugs to the release, even though the ones I found are minor, but the frequency of released updates has been a lot slower than with the above two.

If you feel like exploring, here are some others to try:

LinuxMint 4.0: Mint is basically just a modified Ubuntu, which improves the visuals and provides a lot of non-free stuff out-of-the-box. This means that all multimedia formats etc. will work out of the box. Mint is more or less a one man show with no clear road maps or upgrade paths in between versions, which makes is non-suitable for professional use. It is still an attractive choice for your bedroom PC, kids or whenever you want a setup that needs minimal configuration.

PCLinuxOS 2007 (PCLOS): PCLinuxOS is a fork of Mandriva, which has a small but fanatic fan groub. Like Mint does for Ubuntu, PCLOS also provides a lot of non-free stuff for the default install. Besides configuration, PCLOS has also changed the package management to use Synaptic, so the changes go deeper than surface. Like Mint, PCLOS is a more or less one man show, but suitable for many secondary uses.

SimplyMEPIS 7.0: Mepis is literally a one man show, that used to be based on Ubuntu, but the just recently released 7.0 is built from Debian Etch. Mepis comes with a very nice and clean KDE setup, and binary compatibility with Debian gives it some credibility. It is an exotic alternative to try, if you do not like Ubuntu – at least the KDE implementation is much better than in Kubuntu. While Mepis has been around for few years, I would not choose it for business usage due to obvious reasons.

This article was written using openSUSE 10.3.