A general purpose distro

turboscrew · 07-08-2014, 06:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by NGIB

My wife HATES technology and gets irritated VERY quickly if her computer doesn't do exactly what she wants it to do. She has no patience at all and just wants it to work. I finally set her up with MX-14 and she has been very pleased. It's stable, works well, and has all the features she needs. She is a basic user and surfs the web, occasionally works with a spreadsheet or document, uploads & downloads pictures of the grand kids, copies pictures off her phone, listens to her music library, and uses Skype to talk to her family in the Philippines. It comes with the Xfce DE but I installed LXDE and removed all the menu stuff that she will never use to give her a simple and clean interface. The support forum has some very smart folks and I've seen problems solved very quickly even if it involves old hardware or unique needs.

It's based on Debian Stable but the authors bring in stuff from backports so the software is "fresher"...

http://www.mepiscommunity.org/mx

Tried it on Live DVD. Not bad at all.
Still charting my options.

turboscrew · 07-08-2014, 06:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TobiSGD

I would consider Fedora, at least until they come further with their Fedora.Next plans, to be unsuitable for a machine that also acts as a server, both due to its short life cycle and its frequent changes of software versions.
Possibly the just released CentOS 7 would be a better fit.

That might be worth checking out too.

turboscrew · 07-08-2014, 06:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by John VV

I like OpenSUSE 13.1

I use that as my everyday OS and ScientificLinux 6 for the programs that NEED that

suse is in the RPM redhat family ( sort of ?? )
they use rpms but are VERY VERY gui centric and dose things a bit different

most of the time it is EASIER to use the gui over the terminal

Tried that maybe a year ago.
I do't remember why I gave it up. Maybe I should retry it.
On my small old laptop it was terribly heavy. Mint 17 / Cinnamon was much lighter.
Maybe the small machine just hadn't enough memory...

turboscrew · 07-08-2014, 06:18 PM

Any comments on Mageia?

NGIB · 07-08-2014, 06:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by turboscrew

Any comments on Mageia?

Tried it out once about a year ago and it failed on the first software update - wiped it and moved on...

John VV · 07-08-2014, 07:06 PM

I think the main issue would be Gnome2 VS Gnome3

a lot of people LIKE gnome3 others DO NOT!!!

i do not !
so i moved over to using KDE4 ,it is more usable for me than gnome3 .

but it is up to you

OpenSUSE has 18 months of support VS fedora's 13 months
BUT
upgrading between minor versions is VERY easy
a gui ( yast) is used for most settings and configuring the os
and icons for EVERYTHING , very GUI centric

DavidMcCann · 07-09-2014, 11:48 AM

Mint. It has CUPS 1.7, it doesn't look as if you're computer is trying to turn into a phone, and it's easy to use.

turboscrew · 07-09-2014, 06:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DavidMcCann

Mint. It has CUPS 1.7, it doesn't look as if you're computer is trying to turn into a phone, and it's easy to use.

Mint 17 has been running there for a few months, but there is something - the printer still doesn't work. I tried xubuntu and the printer worked. Then I tried Mint 17 LiveDVD and the printer worked. Then I installed Mint 17, and the printer stopped working.

I used to run Debian 7.1 - 7.4 before I got tired of wrestling with printer problems and went for Mint 17. Later I found out that CUPS 1.5 had a bug that caused my printer to not work.
(SIGH)
That is one of the reasons I'd like to try some non-deb distro.
Maybe the printing is a little different than deb-distros' and just maybe the printing worked.
It's funny, though, that with the other machines the printing seems to work, but not with the GA-B75M-D3H board. Except, of course, Live DVD versions. :-S

The USB ports seem to be OK, because webcam, phone, camera, etc work. (The same printer problem with both USB3.0/2.0 and USB2.0/1.1 ports.)

I've tried to get some help for debugging the problam, but haven't got any hints where to look. Any idea how to reach those open printing folks?

maples · 07-09-2014, 09:15 PM

have you tried googling what linux driver your printer uses? AFAIK, liveCDs come packed with as many drivers as they can fit, but the actual installed OS doesn't have all of them. So there's probably some package that you just need to install

Hope this helps!

turboscrew · 07-10-2014, 02:51 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by maples

have you tried googling what linux driver your printer uses? AFAIK, liveCDs come packed with as many drivers as they can fit, but the actual installed OS doesn't have all of them. So there's probably some package that you just need to install

Hope this helps!

Yes, I have googled.
I've also asked/searched here (in the linuxquestions), Debian forums, Ubuntu forums and Mint forums.

turboscrew · 07-10-2014, 02:50 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by maples

have you tried googling what linux driver your printer uses? AFAIK, liveCDs come packed with as many drivers as they can fit, but the actual installed OS doesn't have all of them. So there's probably some package that you just need to install

Hope this helps!

I remember that the most commonly used (default with cnijfilter-mp140series) was 2.40, but it didn't work.

Tried this: http://www.canon-europe.com/Support/...uage=&os=Linux

Tried that too:
https://launchpad.net/~michael-gruz/...e/ubuntu/canon

I think this was my first thread about that in this site.

Here is my thread on the Mint site.

Here on the Debian site.
Even if it says "solved" the problem was actually not solved.

turboscrew · 07-17-2014, 06:06 AM

Which "home distros" are known to have good peripheral/firmware support?
I heard, Centos might be "restricted" with SW (it is the free version of Red Hat - business oriented distro).

Any comments on Mageia, OpenSUSE or PCLinuxOS?
Ubuntu seems to have good support for peripherals, but it's heavy, unstable, needs fequent updates and it has Unity.
For some reason (probably firmware) my printer doesn't work with it.
The same goed with Slackware and Debian (for now), because the CUPS version has bug that messes up with my printer, and the next
official release (with working CUPS) is not yet published.

I'd also like the distro to be common enough to have reasonably good community support.

NGIB · 07-17-2014, 07:23 AM

I used PCLinuxOS for a time and it's a solid distro, their support forum is very good as well. No real reason I hopped away from it other than I tend to try out everything. The newsletter they publish monthly is a treasure trove of good information that can be applied to other distros as well...

turboscrew · 07-17-2014, 09:06 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by NGIB

I used PCLinuxOS for a time and it's a solid distro, their support forum is very good as well. No real reason I hopped away from it other than I tend to try out everything. The newsletter they publish monthly is a treasure trove of good information that can be applied to other distros as well...

Thanks, worth trying then. No surprises, like "known to have lousy printer support" or "only uses FAT16"? ;-D

turboscrew · 07-17-2014, 04:46 PM

Whoops, PCLinuxOS has CUPS 1.4! Even Debian had 1.5 (Next will have 1.7).
Also OpenSUSE has old CUPS: 1.5 - the one with which Canon printers, like mine, doesn't work.
(I understand that the next release will also have CUPS 1.5.)

Mageia also has support for NVIDIA drivers, OpenSUSE doesn't.

Those according to Distrowatch.