# Best free operating systems



## SpringWater (Nov 13, 2012)

So I was just wondering what are some good free operating systems apart from ubuntu? I tried looking it up in google but most of the results I got were really bad.


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## wolfeking (Nov 13, 2012)

The best out depends on what you want to do.  Ubuntu is just fine. I personally don't like 12.04 at all, because of the interface. 10.04.4 is just fine though. 

Crunchbang is good if you want a lightweight system. OC linux OS is good if you want something that looks good to the average user.  Mint is good if you want a Ubuntu 2.0 type system. 

What do you plan to do with it? And have you ever used Linux before? That is the main two questions to suggest the best options.


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## SpringWater (Nov 13, 2012)

Well right now I have Windows XP installed on my pc and I wanted to install some os that is less ugly than XP and I want to be able to browse the web and maybe do some photo editing. Ubuntu is probably my best shot, but I was just wondering if there is anything else I could try.


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## wolfeking (Nov 13, 2012)

web browsing, you are fine with any distro. 

Photo editing, you are a little worse off. Photoshop CS5 will work in Ubuntu with Wine and Play on Linux, but it is not guaranteed fully functional. Gimp, the native editor, is much less functional, and takes a lot of learning. 

Try it out, and see what you think, but don't expect it to be the same as windows.


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## SpringWater (Nov 13, 2012)

I already used ubuntu before and I think its quite good, I haven't been using it since like 2009 though so I'm sure that a few things have changed , And gimp is actually the photo editing software I'm quite familiar with so I shouldn't have any problems with that. Thanks for the response!


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## spirit (Nov 13, 2012)

Take a look into Linux Mint.


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## jaydeee (Nov 17, 2012)

red hat has free versions as I remember it.


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## voyagerfan99 (Nov 17, 2012)

jaydeee said:


> red hat has free versions as I remember it.



Red Hat is enterprise level software that is not free. The free version of Linux sponsored by Red Hat is Fedora.


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## SpringWater (Nov 17, 2012)

Red Hat? Fedora?...never heard of it, is it much diffrent than ubuntu? And what are the main diffrences between linux mint and ubuntu ? Which one would you recommend ?


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## voyagerfan99 (Nov 17, 2012)

SpringWater said:


> Red Hat? Fedora?...never heard of it, is it much diffrent than ubuntu? And what are the main diffrences between linux mint and ubuntu ? Which one would you recommend ?



You must have been in an Ubuntu hole. There's hundreds of Linux distros out there. So, just to bang the major points out of the way:



> One of Fedora's main objectives is not only to contain software distributed under a free and open source license, but also to be on the leading edge of such technologies.[5][6] Fedora developers prefer to make upstream changes instead of applying fixes specifically for Fedora—this ensures that their updates are available to all Linux distributions.[7]
> 
> A version of Fedora has a relatively short life cycle—the maintenance period is only 13 months: there are 6 months between releases, and version X is supported only until 1 month after version X+2.[8] This promotes leading-edge software because it frees developers from some backward compatibility restraints, but it also makes Fedora a poor choice for product development (e.g., embedded systems), which usually requires long-term vendor-support, unavailable with any version of Fedora.





> Linux Mint adds many features that baseline Ubuntu does not have, one of which is providing a more complete out of the box experience by including proprietary and patented software[1] including Java and the Adobe Flash web browser plugin, which are features that are needed to play certain online games, watch YouTube, and certain applications (however, due to issues with licensing, proprietary drivers for things like wireless cards are not included, though they can be downloaded for free after installation). It is possible to run many software written for Windows through the software package Wine, which is available to install.


Also note Linux Mint has longer lifecycles for their major release versions (normally 2-4 years), while their minor release versions have shorter lifecycles (normally a year).

Linux Mint and Ubuntu are cousins, so they're very similar. Ubuntu originated from Debian, and Linux Mint is a spawn of Ubuntu.

Don't worry about Red Hat. That's a paid enterprise level Linux subscription.

The best advise I can give you for trying different Linux distros is to download a whole bunch of them and try them out (either as a live CD or as a virtual machine) and then finally determine which one you want to settle with. When I first actually decided to seriously look into Linux, I ran Linux Mint 9 (Isadora) for about a year or so, and rarely booted into Windows unless I needed to do something specific.

You can also see a relationship of all the current linux distros here (WARNING: BIG PICTURE) :http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8c/Gldt.svg

And you can also use the Linux Distro Chooser Quiz to see which ones suit you best.
http://www.zegeniestudios.net/ldc/


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## SpringWater (Nov 17, 2012)

Wow, thanks for help, this link to this website that helps you choose what linux version is best for you is awesome! Thanks again for help :good:


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