Ask HN: Which Linux distro should i choose? :)

[shorty_]

Hey guys,

last time i worked with Linux (Slackware, Debian, Suse) was about 15 years ago...

As i changed the job from something non-IT to a Java developer, i wanna get into Linux again.

Which distro could you guys suggest me? Main purpose of this Linux machine will be coding.

I guess Ubuntu?

Also, is the Hardware support only dependent of/to the Linux Kernel, or also dependent of other things like the GUI etc?

Thank you in advance and please excuse my bad english.

[brudgers]

Historically, you can run some version of whatever GUI over any distro. It may require more effort and technical knowledge than you have or want to acquire.

I say 'historically' because right now there are two display server protocols in play, Wayland and X. From the user perspective, it's a low level split that hasn't been fully sorted out, yet.

Practically from a user perspective, Wayland isn't good at leveraging the power of Nvidia GPU's. If this matters -- it mostly doesn't for average use -- then it's worth considering. Further out of the mainline, Wayland doesn't have a tiling window manager with a long track record of deployment...it doesn't have any window managers with a long track record because it's new relative to X.

I'm not bashing on Wayland. But it's a good example of the kind of problem that switching to Linux raises: you have to live with the bets you make. I'm running Ubuntu 16.04. To run GIMP 2.10 or greater, I have to upgrade to Ubuntu 18.04 or greater. If I run Wayland, I have limited access to my Nvidia GPU.

Even choosing Ubuntu has meant a half a dozen changes over two years to my touchpad configuration as libinput got sorted out for my uncommon Dell supplied hardware. Mean while all those changes were completely transparent to my old Thinkpad's trackpad.

+ Advice:

Try out Ubuntu 18.04 LTS from a bootable USB thumbdrive on the computer.

If it works good enough, install it.

[shorty_]

Hey, thanks for your feedback.

It was my idea too, to try to boot it from USB first, before removing Windows (i dont want to have 2x OS).

My colleague got the same notebook (HP Probook 650 G3) and he tried the Ubuntu 18.04 TLS and said to me that he got some problems with the energy management and the trackpad. So i guess i'll try the 18.10 with the newer kernel

[brudgers]

My advice is to keep both operating systems. Windows is useful.

Dual booting managed by Ubuntu works fine outside of corner cases with old hardware, and Ubuntu requires significantly less disk space than Windows. I've found 60GB is often enough for a primary and a swap partition in normal circumstances...not storing lots of audio/video/image data.

Another alternative is to buy a small SSD and swap it for the existing SSD/HD holding Windows. Then you can always turn the laptop back into a Windows laptop. I put the old drives in the box for the new drive with a piece of paper listing the Windows Activation Key and the administrative password to the installation...learned from experience.

Don't bet on 18.10 having better performance with your HP. I have a Dell Precision that Dell offered with Linux as an option and is actively supporting. I've had to learn to configure the touchpad with Xinput even though Dell was working on it. The underlying driver has changed four times over the last two years. Each time it does, I have to tweak Xinput (Now, I add commands to ~/.bashrc).

But why not 18.10?

+ Because you'll be upgrading in April 2019, October 2019, and April 2020. The last will be to 20.04LTS. In between, Ubuntu will be testing out alternatives that may or may not go into 20.04LTS.

+ And, things like trackpad and power management get backported to LTS. Those four changes to my Dell trackpad were all while using 16.04LTS.

+ In short, non-LTS releases like 18.10 are not about bug-fixing and LTS releases get bug fixes. That's what "LTS" means.

The reason to run a non-LTS release is if there is an application that requires it. Or for bragging rights. But mostly, non-LTS releases are more work...the first time the trackpad issue on my Dell came up, I discovered there was a fix upstream in September. So I installed Ubuntu 16.10 figuring it would be there. It wasn't. Around March 2017, it showed up in a 16.04 LTS update.

[hieloz]

Ubuntu is ok, which has much larger software repositories and more third party support,friendly desktop for daily tasks. If older computers and netbooks, prefer to Lubuntu，which is a lightweight version of Ubuntu deploying the LXDE desktop environment.

[shpx]

Just install Ubuntu and think about something more important.

[CtrlAltEngage]

Agreed - unless you can identify a reason not to, just use ubuntu. For most people it's just fine.