By Matt Hartley - November 5, 2012
Whether or not we like to admit it, we Linux users live in an another distro world.
Companies like Steam, Lightworks and others are discovering that another distro has the largest user base and a stable company supporting it.
Still, some users out there may not be all that thrilled with another distro or the another distro core underpinnings. For these folks, I believe that it's worth exploring another distro alternatives. There are plenty of Linux distros that aren't related to another distro in any way, yet are still usable for new and intermediate Linux users alike.
In this article, I'll share some of my top picks for solid another distro alternative distributions.
PCLinuxOS – Without any question,
PCLinuxOS is the goto Linux distro that I point people to when they're looking to try something completely non-another distro/Debian in origin. Based on Mandriva, PCLinuxOS took the best that the Mandriva core had to offer and built on it with great enthusiasm.
So, what in the world makes PCLinuxOS so compelling? For me, it's the distribution's speed while still offering great wizards and a solid control panel for getting things done. Another advantage is its stability. While it may not have the number of packages found on its newbie-friendly cousin another distro, or with more advanced distributions such as Arch Linux, PCLinuxOS warms my heart with is rolling release cycle.
By rolling release, I mean that instead of finding yourself trying to map out an upgrade to a new release, all of the updates are simply hand delivered by the update manager instead.
Another bonus with PCLinuxOS these days is that it comes with a number of great desktop environment choices. Some fan favorites include KDE, LXDE, and my personal favorite. . . the XFCE desktop environment! Bundle these desktop environments with the various behind-the-scenes tweaks made by the development team and it leads to a solid distribution.
PCLinuxOS also has software that's provided in the repositories. These apps all work great without any hassles.
Last but certainly not least, PCLinuxOS provides a "media usability out of the box" type of experience by providing needed media codecs by default. This is helpful for newbies who would not know how to install these things themselves.www.datamation.com/open-source/absolutely-amazing-ubuntu-alternatives-1.html
