Help selecting Distro for my requirements.

A

Aditya1999

New Member
Joined
May 2, 2019
Messages
6
Reaction score
2
Credits
0
I am looking for a new Linux distro to run alongside my Windows 10. My main concerns are driver support and apps. I used to run Ubuntu but it didn’t support my devices. Manjaro and Deepin both look pretty cool but I'm open to other options. I want to run it on a laptop with 8 GB RAM and dual booting is key. I don't play games, so a distro which is not good for gaming is fine as well. A good UI will be helpful.
 


Hello Aditya1999 and welcome to the forum.

My best advice I can offer since Ubuntu doesn't support your devices is to get a USB Thumb drive and and create bootable media to test Manjaro and Deepin to see if they offer the support for your devices..

If those fail to offer the support for you devices than start testing other Linux Distros.

You might have a look at LMDE 3 (Cindy) it is based on Debian with the Linux Mint Cinnamon user interface.

https://betanews.com/2018/08/31/linux-mint-debian-lmde3-cindy/

https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=3633

https://linuxmint.com/rel_cindy.php

https://linuxmint.com/download_lmde.php
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Aditya1999 said:
I am looking for a new Linux distro to run alongside my Windows 10. My main concerns are driver support and apps. I used to run Ubuntu but it didn’t support my devices. Manjaro and Deepin both look pretty cool but I'm open to other options. I want to run it on a laptop with 8 GB RAM and dual booting is key. I don't play games, so a distro which is not good for gaming is fine as well. A good UI will be helpful.
Click to expand...
It would be helpful to know which devices were/are not supported.
Since most distros are running similar versions of the kernel I would expect device support to be similar across distros.
The most helpful distro may be one which makes the installation of third party or proprietary device drivers easier.
 
Vrai said:
It would be helpful to know which devices were/are not supported.
Since most distros are running similar versions of the kernel I would expect device support to be similar across distros.
The most helpful distro may be one which makes the installation of third party or proprietary device drivers easier.
Click to expand...

Well, my HP printer was not supported and it also didn't recognize wifi, none at all. I had to google the problem and install some sortsoft. Even then the speed was significantly reduced. I've read in a few places that manjaro has really good driver support. Is it true?
 
Aditya1999 said:
Well, my HP printer was not supported and it also didn't recognize wifi, none at all. I had to google the problem and install some sortsoft. Even then the speed was significantly reduced. I've read in a few places that manjaro has really good driver support. Is it true?
Click to expand...
Can't say for sure although I'm sure there driver support is as good as any since Manjaro is a rolling release.

Best way to know is to create bootable usb thumb drive media and test it and see

As for the wireless you can always purchase an external usb wireless adapter made for Linux.
 
Aditya1999 said:
Well, my HP printer was not supported and it also didn't recognize wifi, none at all. I had to google the problem and install some sortsoft. Even then the speed was significantly reduced. I've read in a few places that manjaro has really good driver support. Is it true?
Click to expand...

Yes. Manjaro does have very good device support. And the Arch AUR ( Arch User Repositories ) is available also for Manjaro users [ seems like 'everything' is in the Arch AUR!].

I am surprised that the HP printer was not supported. Usually Linux has very good support for HP printers. Make sure the "HPLIP" package is installed. There may also be printer drivers available on the HP support site. I have had very good luck with HP printers on Linux but oft times not all the features are available.

Some wireless cards have long been problematic in Linux. It has gotten much better in the past several years but there are still problematic cards. If yours is one of them then that is the only one that counts! The first step is to find out 'exactly' what wireless card is in your machine. Then proceed to determine if it can be made to work. On my Asus laptop I had issues with the onboard wireless constantly dropping the connection and/or slow speeds. I finally just decided to plug in a little 'micro' wireless dongle and BOOM! worked like a charm :) So I shut off the onboard wireless and use the dongle and have no issues whatsoever.

What @poorguy said about creating a bootable USB to test different versions of Linux makes a lot of sense and may lead you to a distro which works best on your machine.
 
I installed Manjaro GNOME and PopOS recently. I'm in a bit of a dilemma about which one I should continue with. Pop has a really good UI and a good repository (good as in it provides way more details about software and is neatly categorized, compared to Octopi or Pacman). I'm new to Linux but I can learn things if I need to. I'm a mathematics student and want to transition to Linux because it is faster. Whereas Pop has a good UI and feels easier to work with, Manjaro feels faster and has better driver support. What do you suggest I go with? (I have tried Ubuntu and Mint before but they didn't stick with me that well).
 
Hello Aditya 1999,

I have never used PopOS although I have used Manjaro in the past and for the most it worked fine.

As for which is the best for you well that is something only you can determine through use of them.

Linux is Linux and they all do the same thing just built on different base and use different user interface / desktop.

What's important is to have fun with Linux while using Linux and learning Linux. ;)
 
One of the many great things about Linux is that you don't have to choose just one. You can actually install both, or many more. You can have 2 root partitions on 1 hard drive and at boot time choose which distro to boot to. You could also just choose one, then install a VM application and have multiple Linux VMs to play with. At any time you could then go and install a different distro on the hard drive. VMs will be slightly slower than they would be if installed on the hard drive, but you can still test drive them before choosing one. One thing I'd suggest, since you're new to Linux, is for each distro choose a different desktop environment, so you can decide which desktop you prefer as well. If you go with the same desktop on each distro, they may all feel exactly the same.
 
Aditya1999 said:
I installed Manjaro GNOME and PopOS recently. I'm in a bit of a dilemma about which one I should continue with. Pop has a really good UI and a good repository (good as in it provides way more details about software and is neatly categorized, compared to Octopi or Pacman). I'm new to Linux but I can learn things if I need to. I'm a mathematics student and want to transition to Linux because it is faster. Whereas Pop has a good UI and feels easier to work with, Manjaro feels faster and has better driver support. What do you suggest I go with? (I have tried Ubuntu and Mint before but they didn't stick with me that well).
Click to expand...

If you like Manjaro I suggest going with that. With Manjaro you will have all the Arch goodness in addition to draw upon :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Members online

Total: 461 (members: 3, guests: 458)

Latest posts

Top