Linux Distributions Reviewed by Me

Ubuntu - THE BEST and most stable distro. I rarely found a bug while using it. Installation of programs is easy. The best part is the Ubuntu installer which can be used even by a 6 yr old. Ease of use and solid online support are its pros. New versions (after 9.04) boot very fast. Rating: 9/10

Linux mint - Good distro, all media plug-ins are pre-installed and has the stability of Ubuntu. Rating: 8/10

Mandriva- The distro I prefer after Ubuntu. Control Panel provided is good. Network Manager is fabulous. Media plug-ins are pre-installed. Software installer is not good. Rating: 7/10

Slackware – Nothing to like in it. Still with LILO (no GRUB). Rating: 5/10

Debian - Stable but lacking in features. Nothing special about it. Can’t be called a modern distro. Rating: 6/10

Opensuse - No good after version 10.3, because of the KDE4 which crashes frequently. Rating: 7/10

Vixta – One word-Crap. Rating: 3/10

Belenix - Not good, boot time is too high and there is nothing special about it. Rating: 5/10

Linpus Lite – Good for netbooks only. Rating: 4/10

Puppy - Amazing distro with all media plug-ins and useful programs pre-installed.Very good for old machines. Rating: 8/10

Fedora - I never liked fedora. Rating: 7/10

Slitaz – Great Linux – I’d say the best tiny Linux present. Less than 30mb with all useful programs and plug-ins installed!! Default theme and desktop look is also good. Has Firefox pre-installed. Rating: 9/10

Tinycore – Very small at 8mb but practically unusable. Rating: 3/10

PCLinuxOS – Bad looks and nothing special in it. Rating: 4/10

SimplyMepis – Average distro. Nothing special in it. Rating: 6/10

DreamLinux – It has a lightweight desktop manager (XFCE) with a Mac-like dock on bottom of the desktop. Is quite fast and also detects other OS and drives easily. Nice control panel. All media plug-ins are pre-installed. Rating: 7/10

Slax - Lightweight KDE applications with nice customized Firefox theme, but not with a one click installer and still with LILO (no GRUB). Rating: 6/10

Sabayon – Sabayon 4 was a very good distro with many bulky games pre-installed. The only con would be the slow boot time. Now, Sabayon 5 has the best implementation of KDE4.3 so far. Rating: 8/10

I Felt Ubuntu

After using SUSE 10.1 for a year on my old desktop, i had to install pirated XP on the new PC just for the sake of troubleshooting my internet connection which suddenly stopped working ..

After reinstalling the drivers for LAN and buying a new LAN card, i came to know that its not the problem with the hardware.. but its with the ISP. So i went for Linux again and installed Ubuntu this time!

I am loving the Hardy Heron(Ubuntu 8.04) on my desktop. Just installed it over my XP and it installed right away from the windows installation program...!

I didn't want to play with the existing installation of windows so i chose to install heron in the D drives largest contiguous space and it worked right away...cool. Didn't took long to install it... and the desktop is cool. It includes many features over the older versions like the Deskbar(similar to Google desktop search), the Fspot photo manager and Firefox 3..and the new System Monitor which is even better than many of the monitoring utilities on XP!

I heard its wireless and power-saving capabilities are good and I recommend it to all users who are seeking an easy to use OS with basic needs on desktops...It runs pretty fast on my dual core 1.6 with just 512 MB RAM. Also has cool eye candy effects like the various animations. I have installed a vista-like theme on it and it looks so lovable..

To my surprise it has a Vista-like 3-D window switcher too(win key+tab)...! and a workspace-switcher cube as well. What more graphic effects can you expect in a free OS?

Ubuntu looks so cool that even XP users are installing Ubuntu themes!!
Look for yourself - http://blog.shankarganesh.com/2007/09/18/ubuntu-themes-for-windows-xp/

I am sticking to Linux..

Switching from pirated Windows to Linux

Main problem with Linux packages

The main disadvantage with Linux packages over windows is the finding and installing of various essential plug-ins. Moreover, the good softwares are being developed for the most popular desktop platform, i.e. Windows. With windows it all comes easy but in Linux packages, although the plug-ins can be updated but there are several drawbacks. Sometimes the repositories are corrupt, you can't find all plug-ins and have trouble in troubleshooting. I tried to completely switch to Linux but there is always some problem.. Like i was able to find .mp3 and .wav plug-ins and get Internet working, but then videos won't play. With another Linux package, i even have video play enabled but Internet not working!. So for now i have both pirated windows and Vector Linux in my PC. I will try to shift to Linux completely once i find the alternatives to all my essential needs in Windows.