Have been an archlinux user for 5 years and dropped it for exact same reason. I learnt a lot and don't regret a single minute.
You are asking for a new distro? It's either Ubuntu or Manjaro these days. Anything else is a personal bias. Because it is all about hardware support and the size of repos official and unofficial. Both Ubuntu and Manjaro excel in these, everything else lags behind.
Debian -- (stable) old, outdated packages, limited repository, you will eventually be forced to compile stuff and one day you will regret it believe me. Debian (unstable) is better but then again it won't be "stable" anymore so why bother. Debian is for ppl who use a fixed list of applications and have same fixed workflow. Development experience under Debian is also worse than on Ubuntu.
OpenSUSE/Fedora -- again, limited repository of packages, RPMs and other differences which might be good or bad but just not worth the time to learn.
Mint -- very nice distro, basically a version of Manjaro from Ubuntu world. I found its forum quite outdated and not very responsive. Also, long ago it was not as stable as claimed and after an update DE crashed into white screen on my wife's laptop leaving me speechless and my wife laughing at me while I was trying to defend the Linux superiority over Windows :) It was over 5 years ago of course but here you go. I left Mint and never returned afterwards but I believe it is a good distro.
BSD world -- for purists. Quality software and repos but good luck getting support for new hardware. Limited community and development. Again this is a good niche world.
Overall, since I was and arch user I use Manjaro. It installs some junk apps (like any other out-of-the-box distro on this planet) but you can go with netinstall iso if you like. Both Ubuntu and Manjaro have very good hardware support (good luck dealing with Nvidia cards on something less popular). So good I am using Manjaro on surface book 2 now and I had much less problems with both these distros throughout the time on different modern laptops. Besides Manjaro repos and AUR size is second to none. Best forum among all the many distros I tried, very active and responsive. I would however advise you against Manjaro as I think it is less stable than Ubuntu. It is developers distro of choice for a reason. So look no further.
This is a great overview, thanks. I'm still surprised at all the Debian Stable hate, I really had a different impression of it vs Ubuntu. Good to know.
Well, there is always a day when one of us gets introduced into a beautiful world of deb package installation for one specific package version that you need to have on your machine. Here is a glimpse of it: semitwist.com/articles/article/vie...
Have been an archlinux user for 5 years and dropped it for exact same reason. I learnt a lot and don't regret a single minute.
You are asking for a new distro? It's either Ubuntu or Manjaro these days. Anything else is a personal bias. Because it is all about hardware support and the size of repos official and unofficial. Both Ubuntu and Manjaro excel in these, everything else lags behind.
Debian -- (stable) old, outdated packages, limited repository, you will eventually be forced to compile stuff and one day you will regret it believe me. Debian (unstable) is better but then again it won't be "stable" anymore so why bother. Debian is for ppl who use a fixed list of applications and have same fixed workflow. Development experience under Debian is also worse than on Ubuntu.
OpenSUSE/Fedora -- again, limited repository of packages, RPMs and other differences which might be good or bad but just not worth the time to learn.
Mint -- very nice distro, basically a version of Manjaro from Ubuntu world. I found its forum quite outdated and not very responsive. Also, long ago it was not as stable as claimed and after an update DE crashed into white screen on my wife's laptop leaving me speechless and my wife laughing at me while I was trying to defend the Linux superiority over Windows :) It was over 5 years ago of course but here you go. I left Mint and never returned afterwards but I believe it is a good distro.
BSD world -- for purists. Quality software and repos but good luck getting support for new hardware. Limited community and development. Again this is a good niche world.
Overall, since I was and arch user I use Manjaro. It installs some junk apps (like any other out-of-the-box distro on this planet) but you can go with netinstall iso if you like. Both Ubuntu and Manjaro have very good hardware support (good luck dealing with Nvidia cards on something less popular). So good I am using Manjaro on surface book 2 now and I had much less problems with both these distros throughout the time on different modern laptops. Besides Manjaro repos and AUR size is second to none. Best forum among all the many distros I tried, very active and responsive. I would however advise you against Manjaro as I think it is less stable than Ubuntu. It is developers distro of choice for a reason. So look no further.
This is a great overview, thanks. I'm still surprised at all the Debian Stable hate, I really had a different impression of it vs Ubuntu. Good to know.
Well, there is always a day when one of us gets introduced into a beautiful world of deb package installation for one specific package version that you need to have on your machine. Here is a glimpse of it: semitwist.com/articles/article/vie...
And this article on HN: news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19353010
Can totally relate with the author, no wonder Ubuntu is trying to find a substituion for deb packages via snaps at least partly :)
There was a good Debian distro I enjoyed and it was Crunchbang (discontinued).
There's is a fork currently supported on crunchbangplusplus.org ;)