At work we use Ubuntu, however, I'm not at all happy with it and don't want to use it on my private computer. Which is the best alternative (I've been looking at OpenSUSE; Mint is based on Ubuntu/Debian but only shares the repository with Ubuntu (right?); Fedora has bad reviews at the moment and might be a pain to set up (drivers etc.)). I'm also considering FreeBSD, a completely different beast.

On Monday, 20 January 2014 at 12:30:27 UTC, Chris wrote:
> At work we use Ubuntu, however, I'm not at all happy with it and don't want to use it on my private computer. Which is the best alternative (I've been looking at OpenSUSE; Mint is based on Ubuntu/Debian but only shares the repository with Ubuntu (right?); Fedora has bad reviews at the moment and might be a pain to set up (drivers etc.)). I'm also considering FreeBSD, a completely different beast.

It is always a good idea to list specific requirements first :P For example:

 - how comfortable you are with console tinkering?
 - what is your preferred Deskop Environment / Windows Manager?
 - do you need most recent versions for some software?
 - is having good out of the box support for D important? ;)

etc.

On Monday, 20 January 2014 at 12:34:33 UTC, Dicebot wrote:
> On Monday, 20 January 2014 at 12:30:27 UTC, Chris wrote:
>> At work we use Ubuntu, however, I'm not at all happy with it and don't want to use it on my private computer. Which is the best alternative (I've been looking at OpenSUSE; Mint is based on Ubuntu/Debian but only shares the repository with Ubuntu (right?); Fedora has bad reviews at the moment and might be a pain to set up (drivers etc.)). I'm also considering FreeBSD, a completely different beast.
>
> It is always a good idea to list specific requirements first :P For example:
>
>  - how comfortable you are with console tinkering?

Is fine with me as long as it doesn't get too much.

>  - what is your preferred Deskop Environment / Windows Manager?

Most distros are flexible. Right now I'm testing Xfce.

>  - do you need most recent versions for some software?

Not necessarily. But it might be handy to have a good updating mechanism.

>  - is having good out of the box support for D important? ;)

Should be fine as I'm considering OpenSUSE, Mint or (maybe) Fedora. There are easy installers for all of them and dub works on all of them, I suppose.

>
> etc.

On Monday, 20 January 2014 at 12:30:27 UTC, Chris wrote:
> At work we use Ubuntu, however, I'm not at all happy with it and don't want to use it on my private computer. Which is the best alternative (I've been looking at OpenSUSE; Mint is based on Ubuntu/Debian but only shares the repository with Ubuntu (right?); Fedora has bad reviews at the moment and might be a pain to set up (drivers etc.)). I'm also considering FreeBSD, a completely different beast.

I'm really enjoying Arch + Xmonad. Every time I have to use my work machine with openSuse and gnome or kde I feel like it's getting in my way at every turn by comparison.

Simple, controllable distro + a good tiling window manager = productive, flexible programmer.

As a bonus, Arch has great D support out of the box :)

On Monday, 20 January 2014 at 12:30:27 UTC, Chris wrote:
> At work we use Ubuntu, however, I'm not at all happy with it and don't want to use it on my private computer. Which is the best alternative (I've been looking at OpenSUSE; Mint is based on Ubuntu/Debian but only shares the repository with Ubuntu (right?); Fedora has bad reviews at the moment and might be a pain to set up (drivers etc.)). I'm also considering FreeBSD, a completely different beast.

I try lots of distros (*buntu, debian, suse, mandriva, fedora, centos, gentoo...). And every distro has some cons and pros. But then I discovered Arch linux. After that, I do not have a reason to try another distro :).

BTW. Arch linux has perfect D support

On Monday, 20 January 2014 at 12:30:27 UTC, Chris wrote:
> At work we use Ubuntu, however, I'm not at all happy with it and don't want to use it on my private computer. Which is the best alternative (I've been looking at OpenSUSE; Mint is based on Ubuntu/Debian but only shares the repository with Ubuntu (right?); Fedora has bad reviews at the moment and might be a pain to set up (drivers etc.)). I'm also considering FreeBSD, a completely different beast.

gentoo ;)

On Monday, 20 January 2014 at 12:30:27 UTC, Chris wrote:
> At work we use Ubuntu, however, I'm not at all happy with it and don't want to use it on my private computer. Which is the best alternative (I've been looking at OpenSUSE; Mint is based on Ubuntu/Debian but only shares the repository with Ubuntu (right?); Fedora has bad reviews at the moment and might be a pain to set up (drivers etc.)). I'm also considering FreeBSD, a completely different beast.

I use OpenSUSE with KDE desktop.  I've had no problems working with most D related stuff.  One minor problem with OpenSUSE is I find that often things are set up just a little differently than in some of the more popular distro's.  This isn't generally a problem as the Repositories are pretty complete, but sometimes trying to configure certain software can be a bit of a pain if the instructions you have found were written for Ubuntu/Redhat (which is common).

One D related problem (a small one) I had was with DUB.  It requires libcurl and it seems SUSE uses a different naming convention for this library than other distros.  This (along with me downloading the wrong DUB binary), caused me some trouble the first time I tried to use it. See:

http://forum.rejectedsoftware.com/groups/rejectedsoftware.dub/thread/230/

Now everything works. DUB complains about missing libcurl-gnutls.so.4 every time I run it ... but it still works.

Having said all that, now that I've read this thread I guess I am going to have to switch to Arch Linux.

On Monday, 20 January 2014 at 12:30:27 UTC, Chris wrote:
> At work we use Ubuntu, however, I'm not at all happy with it and don't want to use it on my private computer. Which is the best alternative (I've been looking at OpenSUSE; Mint is based on Ubuntu/Debian but only shares the repository with Ubuntu (right?); Fedora has bad reviews at the moment and might be a pain to set up (drivers etc.)). I'm also considering FreeBSD, a completely different beast.

As Dicebot said already, it depends heavily on your requirements.

For me, the most important property of any operating system (and by extension Linux distribution) is, that it doesn't hinder me in what I want to do (or better: That is does so as little as possible).

I'm not going to poke the Linux vs. BSD monster with a stick, but personally, I'm using Linux. On the topic of which distribution, I like the amount of freedom Gentoo and Arch give you. Arch does so somewhat less than Gentoo, but I find the amount of time required to compile everything (including the kernel, binutils, etc.), as is done in Gentoo, a lot more of a hindrance than the restrictions Arch has that Gentoo doesn't.

So for the time being I'm using Archlinux+i3, which is a setup I can definitely recommend.

On Monday, 20 January 2014 at 12:47:15 UTC, Chris wrote:
>> - what is your preferred Deskop Environment / Windows Manager?
>
> Most distros are flexible. Right now I'm testing Xfce.

Theoretically - yes. In practice packaging quality differs depending on how much attention specific DE/WM gets from that distro maintainers. For example, you are unlikely to reliably use Unity anywhere but on Ubuntu and Gnome 3 fans are pretty much limited to Fedora and Arch. For more simplistic environments it is not that much of a concern, at least Xfce should be rock solid anywhere.

I am (unsurprisingly) using Arch but can easily imagine perfectly legitimate reasons to not do so :P

On Monday, 20 January 2014 at 14:35:29 UTC, Dicebot wrote:
> On Monday, 20 January 2014 at 12:47:15 UTC, Chris wrote:
>>> - what is your preferred Deskop Environment / Windows Manager?
>>
>> Most distros are flexible. Right now I'm testing Xfce.
>
> Theoretically - yes. In practice packaging quality differs depending on how much attention specific DE/WM gets from that distro maintainers. For example, you are unlikely to reliably use Unity anywhere but on Ubuntu and Gnome 3 fans are pretty much limited to Fedora and Arch. For more simplistic environments it is not that much of a concern, at least Xfce should be rock solid anywhere.
>
> I am (unsurprisingly) using Arch but can easily imagine perfectly legitimate reasons to not do so :P

I've had a look at Arch. While it seems to be a nice and (c)lean distro, it is a bit of a pain in the neck to install / set up. Also I don't know, if it will be easy to get the hardware support I need. I don't want to spend ages configuring it and tinkering with drivers etc. I prefer UI installers and out-of-the box support (and if the latter is not possible, at least an "easy-to-get-the-drivers-later-system"). The laziest option would be Mint, but Mint is basically Ubuntu (if it's not LMDE). If OpenSUSE causes problems with D (as pointed out above), I'm not sure, if it's a good idea to use it, especially now that I use dub. Little annoyances can sometimes become big annoyances, if they occur at a critical moment.

Maybe I'll give Fedora (+ Xfce) a shot.