Distros you tried but didn't like

[CharlesV]

I have to fall into the "wasnt really dislike" ( well.. maybe a few.) I have tried SO MANY distro's over the years. (I literally have a stack of CD's that is 9" high of versions / distro's I tried !)

I may be forgetting one or two, but these were the notable I used / liked:

slackware - my first intro to linux ( 1994? ) , used at work for some "non-windows processing"

Mepis - Found it *right* before the last version, really liked it and was very sad when it was gone.

Knoppix - Used it for a while for repairs, rescues etc. Started trying to use it as a desktop, but too many issues.

Debian - the most stable I have had until MX, but slow on updates and kind of hard to manage.

Puppy - Used it on a few very low end machines for people, Tried to use as my desktop but was too off the beaten path for me.

Fedora - some *very* nice things, but ...

RedHat - Introduced to me and used by manly colleagues, but just didnt fit with me.

Ubuntu - alot of good, but dead weight in many areas imo.

Manjaro - worked well for my desktop and I liked quite a lot of it, but dead deal on my laptops. And I broke it severely more than once ;-/

Pinguy OS - liked it and started to use it, but being ubuntu based it gave me heartburn and then an update crashed out my laptop - never could get it working properly again.

Linux Mint - I liked a lot, actually 'settled' on it and used it for a few years - until I found MX.

MX - All I can say is "ahhh This is how it should work!!"

In all of my searching ( since around 2010? ) I knew two things for sure - it had to be stable, and it had to be "workable". Mepis was the closet thing I found until Mint - but I still had some things I didnt care for and kept looking, but had resigned myself to "Mint was the best I had found".

My goal was to replace windows, and being more than a power user that was a HUGE demand! And, frankly there was a lot about windows that I liked too - and over the years I had crafted my Windows into something amazing. However, Windows privacy, invasive, security and 'climate' had changed and I wanted out. REALLY tough since I support 250 clients, have numerous programs out there, support those programs! and as well as still program. This was all a HUGE ask!

When I heard about MX, being born from Mepis - I had to try it out. And since the very first try ( MX 17 ) I was positive this was it. For me, the tools, the layout of the os, the *thought* that obviously was going into it ... and then the forum. Everything 'felt right', and using as my second rig with Mint on the main rig.. It was around two weeks of use and I realized I was on the MX machine ALL the time and barely gave Mint any other use - Hands down.. MX.

When I turned my attention at replacing "appliances" with MX... things got really fun! With the exception of BSD on firewalls ' routers ... I have replaced ALL of my application boxes with MX running on them. (Again, no small ask!). I have print servers, WiFi Controllers, network management machines, Kiosk's, file and web servers, and application servers. All running MX and all *very stable* and workable. It has been amazing!

By MX 19 I had rebuilt all of my "workforce" - Remote, applications, VM's, programming VM's and methods, and the more I worked at it the more I enjoyed it, stability, smooth, ease of use, being able to fix when there was an issue.. the list just goes on and on. MX has proven to me that it is *by far* the best system I have ever seen / used.

[j2mcgreg]

I came to Linux because I need access to software that I couldn't afford on the Windows platform. The first one I tried was Redhat in '96?. It came on 26 or 27 floppies and it was very frustrating to install and use. I then tried Caldera, Corel, Suse which I really liked except for the fact that it refused to recognize my Samsung laser, I tried Ubuntu but its frequent changes to its default software with its biannual releases was a turn off. Somewhere in this time frame I used Mandrake and stayed with it until it merged with a Brazilian distro and started to get flaky, Late 2006 to early 2007 I found Mepis and I have been here ever since. I really liked KDE on Mepis but now with MX I have switched my allegiance to XFCE.

[richb]

Cannot call it a distro, but DOS on an H89 Heathkit computer. Soldered the components to the circuit board and had a computer. Not a lot you could do with it but it was fun.

[mxer]

Maybe I'm fussy, but I didn't really like distros that didn't use apt, I do occasionally, but my main distro is definately an apt user.

[DukeComposed]

I used to follow the Groklaw site (now defunct) for all the details on this and other legal suits that affected open source software.

The SCO lawsuit era was a wild time in the open source community. SCO sold a couple different UNIX products and through a series of acquisitions and contracts finally decided that they owned the legal rights to call UNIX UNIX. The CEO at the time was a man named Darl McBride (who passed away nine months ago) and he saw the marketshare of Linux as a great opportunity to stay relevant by bullying the nascent corporate Linux ecosystem into paying licensing fees to SCO.

At the time, Linux was still a relatively young project and it was a major fire drill that tested the meaning of what free and open source software was defined to be under U. S. law. In some ways, it tested how free and open source software projects functioned, operated, and what communities were permitted to do with their own code.

It was uncertain times. People were scared. Tech companies sued each other all the time, sure, but this was a not-so-clear-cut challenge as to whether or not Linux was its own independent thing, and it was argued not amongst Linux experts but between lawyers, and refereed by judges who didn't have e-mail, let alone know what a "kernel" or a "virtual memory management subsystem" or an "unsigned character array" is.

Arguing to a normie that Linux is infringing on a UNIX copyright is hard. Proving that Linux is a UNIX-like kernel designed to emulate MINIX, thereby making Linux a clone of a clone, that was built independently by a Finnish college student without reusing any existing UNIX or MINIX software just so he could win an argument with Andrew Tanenbaum, was harder.

Edit: typo

[AVLinux]

Hi,

My first Distro was Mepis (with a very brief look at Dynebolic as well) and I really liked Mepis but the Debian base at the time was way out of date with multimedia apps and my main interest in trying Linux was to see if I could record Audio and edit Video which were my main Windows activities so I moved to Ubuntu for a short time and I tried a '.10' release completely unaware that it had the shelf life of a fruit fly so that turned me off on Ubuntu. After that I did try an openSUSE based Audio Distro called 'JackLab' and it was pretty cool but the YAST aspect of openSUSE was beastly slow and hammered my very poor rural wireless internet connection and limited bandwidth when updating. From there I switched to pure Debian and more recently to MX and with my side hustle of AV Linux I really don't have any time to try Distros just for fun, all my spare time goes into it. That said I had a look at Ubuntu when it switched to Unity but it didn't stick and I have in past years set up family and friends with Linux Mint before I joined up with MX.

[Mauser]

Dislikes?
Windows 11 24H2

While you are talking about Windows I would add Windows 98se due to it being the most unstable rubbish ever created. Windows Vista as I found out what a disaster for others that I didn't bother with it leaving Windows XP on my computer. Every Windows version after Windows 7 was horrible and it was because of Windows 10 I finally switched to LINUX for good.

[DukeComposed]

While you are talking about Windows I would add Windows 98se due to it being the most unstable rubbish ever created

The highest uptime I ever attained on any machine I've ever owned or administered was a repurposed, network-connected Windows 98SE system that was wired up to a Nortel Meridian PBX system through a serial connection and running some $5000 monitoring software service no one ever used, audited, or mentioned again after I'd been assigned to get it working. Time and money well spent! At least I got a new uptime PR out of it.

793 days.

[siamhie]

While you are talking about Windows I would add Windows 98se due to it being the most unstable rubbish ever created.

SE was good too me. Fixed a lot of issues I had with the initial release of 98. The one version I never touched was ME (Millennium).

[Mauser]

While you are talking about Windows I would add Windows 98se due to it being the most unstable rubbish ever created

The highest uptime I ever attained on any machine I've ever owned or administered was a repurposed, network-connected Windows 98SE system that was wired up to a Nortel Meridian PBX system through a serial connection and running some $5000 monitoring software service no one ever used, audited, or mentioned again after I'd been assigned to get it working. Time and money well spent! At least I got a new uptime PR out of it.

793 days.

I can't see how that is possible because when my HP Desktop computer came with Windows 98SE it would freeze solid or I would get the Blue Screen Of Death when I went Online with Dail-up in no more than 10 minutes and Ctrl Alt Del was completely ineffective when that happened. I had to press the power button to get the computer to shutdown and start-up again. I even tried using a US Robotics external hardware modem which made no difference. The only way Windows 98SE would work is if I didn't go Online. I even tried Corel, Mandrake, and even Red Hat LINUX back then but there was a lack of drivers back then that the sound wouldn't work and Dial-Up wouldn't work even though I used an external hardware modem that I didn't need any drivers for, but there was an over abundance excuses back then. Thankfully LINUX was eventually fixed. It wasn't till Windows 2000 came out that I installed where I could go Online without all that nonsense.