- Jul 23, 2014
- 11,816
- 26,784
Goon made me do this... 
If you have the desire to load a linux distribution on your pc or laptop (and I know that quite a few of you have done this...) then I'd say the first rule would be... which distribution do you want to load?
There are about as many linux distros as there are STDs running around in Matt's body at any given time, so be careful in what you choose.
The most user friendly is probably Ubuntu by Canonical (I could probably get fired for saying this so this stays between us...) - Debian is not bad either. Red Hat and SuSE are the market leaders with around 65% and 20% respectively but those two are geared mainly for the enterprise space, even though I run Red Hat Enterprise on my laptop. A lot of our developers run lab environments with Ubuntu, CentOS or Fedora.
Forums and the linux vendor sites are the best bet for this issue: Does the linux distro you want support the hardware that you have? If you have an old laptop - depending on its age, the linux distro may not have drivers for the BIOS (ACPI stuff in there), CPU, NICs, certain PCI cards, etc.
Familiarize yourself with Github as it has TONS of cool stuff that people have posted out there.
Here's a good page from our friends at Dell that walks you through the process of preparing for an Ubuntu install:
http://www.dell.com/support/article/us/en/04/SLN151664/en#Things_to _know
but, check with Ubuntu's support forum to see if your hardware is on the Hardware Compatibility List:
http://www.ubuntu.com/certification/
Each vendor should have a page like this.
If you're really looking for a lightweight Linux distro - Docker just abandoned Ubuntu for Alpine Linux.
Overall - I've found that having a linux laptop is challenging from an application standpoint - mainly, if you're used to Windows and most everything just working (I'm generalizing of course, MS has issues too).. but most apps work without a lot of tweaking, then linux may not be for you.
Also... I've noticed that I'm using a lot more Open Source software on my linux laptop, even an Office suite called Libre Office - a "free" version of the office suite that includes "cover tune" versions of Word, Excel, PPT, etc.
Just seems like applications are a little more of a pain in the butt sometimes on a Linux OS than a Windows OS. But ... I haven't rebooted my Linux laptop in about 3 weeks - solid as a rock.
Quite honestly - most of my work is done in Chrome and/or Firefox so...
I'd be interested to hear what you guys have experienced with some of your linux install adventures and what distro you're using and why.
If you have the desire to load a linux distribution on your pc or laptop (and I know that quite a few of you have done this...) then I'd say the first rule would be... which distribution do you want to load?
There are about as many linux distros as there are STDs running around in Matt's body at any given time, so be careful in what you choose.
The most user friendly is probably Ubuntu by Canonical (I could probably get fired for saying this so this stays between us...) - Debian is not bad either. Red Hat and SuSE are the market leaders with around 65% and 20% respectively but those two are geared mainly for the enterprise space, even though I run Red Hat Enterprise on my laptop. A lot of our developers run lab environments with Ubuntu, CentOS or Fedora.
Forums and the linux vendor sites are the best bet for this issue: Does the linux distro you want support the hardware that you have? If you have an old laptop - depending on its age, the linux distro may not have drivers for the BIOS (ACPI stuff in there), CPU, NICs, certain PCI cards, etc.
Familiarize yourself with Github as it has TONS of cool stuff that people have posted out there.
Here's a good page from our friends at Dell that walks you through the process of preparing for an Ubuntu install:
http://www.dell.com/support/article/us/en/04/SLN151664/en#Things_to _know
but, check with Ubuntu's support forum to see if your hardware is on the Hardware Compatibility List:
http://www.ubuntu.com/certification/
Each vendor should have a page like this.
If you're really looking for a lightweight Linux distro - Docker just abandoned Ubuntu for Alpine Linux.
Overall - I've found that having a linux laptop is challenging from an application standpoint - mainly, if you're used to Windows and most everything just working (I'm generalizing of course, MS has issues too).. but most apps work without a lot of tweaking, then linux may not be for you.
Also... I've noticed that I'm using a lot more Open Source software on my linux laptop, even an Office suite called Libre Office - a "free" version of the office suite that includes "cover tune" versions of Word, Excel, PPT, etc.
Just seems like applications are a little more of a pain in the butt sometimes on a Linux OS than a Windows OS. But ... I haven't rebooted my Linux laptop in about 3 weeks - solid as a rock.
Quite honestly - most of my work is done in Chrome and/or Firefox so...
I'd be interested to hear what you guys have experienced with some of your linux install adventures and what distro you're using and why.
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