Distros you tried but didn't like

[dings]

Just another opinion:

I started with Knoppix and Suse sometime around 2000, but only on rare occasions.
Over the years it was evident that I should switch to Linux. Studying the kinds of distros available, I chose the stable variety.

Linux Mint, Zorin Os and MX Linux are the suitable distros for most users - globally speaking. (I like some others, too.) For most friends I would recommend standard Linux Mint. MX is the best for me, giving me control, flexibilty and a really good environment. It has what I need.

[Colonel Panic]

Someone mentioned Puppy in this thread. I used Puppy for many years and built up a considerable post count (over 2000) on their forum

I started with Puppy 2.00, then moved on to 2.14, 3.01, 4.00, and 4.20 through to 4.31. I have particularly good memories of the derivatives of Puppy 2.14 that I tried (PizzaPup, Puppy Classic, Rudy and Teenpup) and also the 3.01 "Fire Hydrant" series.

Puppy was unique back then in that you could use it as a live disk and yet save the session to your hard drive or USB drive.

Unfortunately I lost interest in the later versions of Puppy based on Debian and Ubuntu, but I still appreciate the ones based on Slackware (which I think are still going).

[Mauser]

One of my friends had Windows ME and I used his computer once and I was surprised I could go Online for more than 10 minutes but it wasn't the most stable Windows but it was much more stable than Windows SE

I was using AMD/ATI/USR devices, so maybe I just had better luck with SE.

but no way as stable as Windows 2000 which I stuck with until Windows XP came out which was even more stable than Windows 2000 and it was the first Windows distro that had no yellow mark with an exclamation point in the hardware manger which was a shock. Windows 7 was my favorite of all the Windows distros.

Honestly, as much as XP was great (best release in my book), I always loved my NT4/2000 installs.

If NT4 didn't cost so much I would of installed it to correct the Windows98SE issues. I could see Windows 2000 being one of your favorites. No activation nonsense which Microsoft started with Windows XP.

[gimcrack]

Only one I dislike and that was Elive. Didn't like the default setup or their default applications of choice. I try out 44 Linux distro's in my time. Been using Linux for over 21 years now. I'm stuck with MX and loving it.

[siamhie]

Has anyone ever tried Winux? https://winuxos.com/

The first time I read about this project (years ago), I figured it would drop into obscurity but they are still around.

[AVLinux]

Only one I dislike and that was Elive. Didn't like the default setup or their default applications of choice. I try out 44 Linux distro's in my time. Been using Linux for over 21 years now. I'm stuck with MX and loving it.

Just curious,

Was it Enlightenment that you didn't like or was it Elive itself (I've never tried it)? Enlightenment is clearly an acquired taste but Elive seems to be in some kind of limbo between ancient E-16 and current Enlightenment..

[dreamer]

I like Debian, MX Linux and LMDE. To be more specific: apt, synaptic, mx tools, xfce, cinnamon and lxqt.
I like SysVinit better than systemd, but switched because of DEs and apps.
I like X11 better than Wayland, mostly because of Synaptic and I haven't had any success with Wayland in VBox. I tried both labwc and wayfire on Debian Trixie, but no luck. I'm probably missing config files or something. Maybe I will try Kwin instead some day.

If someone wonders why Synaptic is special, it's because it's more than a package manager or software store. It gives the user a comprehensive overview of apt status and package relationships.
I have used this app since 2008 so I know where to find the info I want.

I don't really dislike anything I don't have to use. The joy (and curse) of Linux is that you can use whatever you like.

I now see SDDM only seems capable of X11 in Debian Trixie. This is weird because I believe KDE uses it for Wayland, but maybe they use some kind of workaround.
https://packages.debian.org/trixie/sddm

[gimcrack]

Only one I dislike and that was Elive. Didn't like the default setup or their default applications of choice. I try out 44 Linux distro's in my time. Been using Linux for over 21 years now. I'm stuck with MX and loving it.

Just curious,

Was it Enlightenment that you didn't like or was it Elive itself (I've never tried it)? Enlightenment is clearly an acquired taste but Elive seems to be in some kind of limbo between ancient E-16 and current Enlightenment..

Enlightenment is part of it. When I install it icons were big, didn't like the color scheme and that default terminal; Terminology is crazy. Never hear many using Elive, so it must not be to great. I didn't care for it much for sure.

[DeepDayze]

I tried Arch and I gotten to dislike it because it got a bit fiddly especially when having to deal with the AUR for some package I loved on Debian (and not in the main Arch repos) and wanted something similar for Arch. but EndeavourOS distro made it more bearable.

Ubuntu for snaps...yuck. I remembered the older versions of Ubuntu that were quite good without the garbage that crept in in later releases.

[m_pav]

My first Linux experiences prior to the turn of the century were with RedHat followed by Mandrake and in 2002, the Knoppix Live CD really took my interest, but I could not get on with its installer laying down a german language instead of English, so it was very short lived.

Like others here, I can't truly say I hated any of the other distros I tried, and I tried so many I simply can not recall them all. There were some I had no love for, (puppy), but that didn't mean I didn't see something of value in each of them, however slight that may have been

Beginning around the end of 2003, I started leading a local Linux Users group which carried on for 5 years. During that time the group grew beyond the capacity of our rooms and we shifted premises twice during my 5-years as the group lead. To this day I still don't know how I became the leader after only attending 3 of their meetings. In my mind I was a total novice with less than a years worth of Linux experience when there were IT Pros in attendance who worked with Linux for their corporate jobs. As providence would have it, SimplyMEPIS featured much as that's what I was running and some of the folk I've kept in touch with from those times are using MX Linux.

During that time, I became the go-to for Linux ISO's and installation/troubleshooting support. I always carried a CD-ROM zipper case with between 30-40 optical media disks containing most of the then current offerings into every meeting and would regularly give them away of let people clone them during meetings. We held monthly meetings in our hired rooms and I added quarterly 12-hour install-fests in a medium sized rented hall, so I got to see and work with many distros because other members were bringing their favourites in too.