Which is the worst distribution you have tried?

[Diesel330]

I haven't tried lots, but the worst was Mint, I installed it in a brand new laptop and it was freezing once per day, sometimes two, and required a hard reset, and also the internet was disconnecting randomly, not up to my expectations for my brand new laptop

I went to their forums and I asked them what if Mint is really a malware after all, I said it like a joke, however they banned me forever... after that I installed Debian 11 which just had came out, to that same laptop, no freezes, no disconnections since

[arzgi]

Ubuntu. There was quite lot of buzz prior the first Ubuntu was released. Tried a few days after the release. Had used Debian already many years, and saw not any improvements compared to Debian. So after a day or two purged Ubuntu.

[cds60601]

Ubuntu - for different reasons that might be posted. This was when they first went to Unity circa 2010/11

[jmgibson1981]

Pretty much any of them when I first started 10-15 years ago exploring open source. I don't know if it was my combination of hardware or what but the ONLY distro I could even get to boot was Mepis, much less actually try to use. After having so many failed attempts at even getting it to run I'm amazed I stuck with it and have reached this point where I run it near exclusively.

[odinbaal]

From worst to bad:
-The BSD family
-Fedora
-Nobara
-Manjaro

[NFT5]

Robolinux. When I first wanted to move from XP with impending EOL I tried this. Then Debian based so most things actually worked, but run by a nutcase. No forum, no community and requests for support just brought insults and accusations.

Ubuntu - for different reasons that might be posted. This was when they first went to Unity circa 2010/11

Easy second place, caused me no end of grief, to the point that I actually went back to Windows for a couple of years.

PCLOS. Third place because it was a lottery as to whether it would actually instal, and then stuff would break with every update.

There were a few others that I couldn't even get to instal - CentOS, OpenSUSE and Manjaro come to mind.

At the other end of the scale....
Mint: Always worked and I've installed on other peoples' machines and they've used with no problems.
Ubuntu MATE: The earlier versions were really very good. Spoilt by bloat in later versions.
Devuan: Just like Debian really and ran this dual boot for a long time but couldn't ever see any advantage.
MXLinux: Amazed at what those guys have done. If only they hadn't mucked about with permissions.....

[Head_on_a_Stick]

MXLinux: Amazed at what those guys have done. If only they hadn't mucked about with permissions.....

I'm curious: what have they done with permissions?

On topic: I don't have a "worst" distribution; this thread is cruel & pointless. This is people's work & effort we are dismissing here.

[sunrat]

MXLinux: Amazed at what those guys have done. If only they hadn't mucked about with permissions.....

I'm curious: what have they done with permissions?

On topic: I don't have a "worst" distribution; this thread is cruel & pointless. This is people's work & effort we are dismissing here.

Agreed. Several of the distros posted here are ones I have used successfully eg. PCLos, Manjaro. We can't dismiss PEBCAK as the reason for failure, or some weird hardware issue etc.

I'd also like to know about MX permissions.
I used it for some time and had no issues like that. It's quite an excellent distro and the team do great work with packages of which I borrow several to use on Debian, like Audacity3, and Audacious 4.3, and Mystiq. Their snapshot and USB creator tools are great.
Main reasons I don't use it is it's too full of GUI utilities for which I use CLI, and I prefer Debian's KDE Plasma (they changed the default krunner key shortcut too! )

[Diesel330]

Lots of people have good experience with mint as I see on the internet and myself I use their DE Cinnamon, but with Debian. I don't know why mint didn't work for me, but they shouldn't ban me for a joke I made, I wanted to share that so I made this thread. So we are not trashing distributions here, we just sharing our bad experiences with some of them.

I have briefly tried Ubuntu back in the early 2010's and I installed it in several computers in the public sector, it was installing every time with no problems and people were happy with it, so my views of ubuntu are mostly positive.

However I wasn't ready to give up windows back then because of Blizzard's games that I was addicted, when they ruined the games I started experimenting with Linux and never looked back

[Trihexagonal]

From worst to bad:
-The BSD family

Not everyone who runs Linux can run BSD, but everyone who runs BSD can run Linux.

Distro hopping is an exercise in frustration. Once I found Debian sometime around 2000 I stuck with it till I found BackTrack and PC-BSD in 2005. BackTrack had the obvious attraction, has since become Kalj and what I use most now.

The installer for FreeBSD was beyond my n00b skill level and intimidated me. PC-BSD got me to the desktop , I became a beta tester and stuck with it till
I had seen enough of how the influx of X-Systems $$$ changed the focus of the Moore Bros and Drew Lavigne from what's best for our users to what's best for the bottom line of my bank account.

When they were going to put off fixing the Firewall Builder that broke pf till the next upgrade bump, I busted them on it and fled that lassid flock for freedome and FreeBSD. Free as in steal 'em if you can't write 'em Been Sucked Dry

Which was infested with the same moral shortcomings as Less Moore and Dru, of whom all was forgiven, thought they could rewrite history and edit out those shortcomings. Less Moore thought by erasing Weixiong and 7 years of my life spent there as a beta tester, the forums and any sign of my existence would do the trick.

You would have thought FreeBSD birds flocked together in the upper levels of the tiered system they cultivate would have learned from their comrades mistake, but give credit where it's due. They deserve only scorn for stealing my tutorials in broad daylight and thinking erasing Trihexagonal from their coked books would be a beauty plan. But they have no shame, Less values, and a CoC where virtual (((((hugs))))) are a worse infraction than Copyright Infringement.

So, after 20 plus long years of observing those I had little in common with to begin with, I have little love left for the Community as a whole and nothing but Kali boxen online.
.

[exploder]

Ubuntu 22.04 was pretty bad. The software center never really worked right, snaps were problematic and lots of graphical glitches no matter the session I chose. I expected an LTS release to be much less bug ridden after a year of use, it was disappointing, especially on supported hardware...

Luckily Debian 12 was released and EVERYTHING worked perfectly! Even my system with NVidia graphics has no issues or breakage from updates, impressive! All my systems run Debian 12 now and I could not be happier!

[Fossy]

Linux Mint based on Ubuntu and LMDE (with all due respect to Clément Lefèbvre and his team , in fact a neither mussel nor fish operating system) were my learning experience ... Never regretted it , learned quite a lot .
Ubuntu ( Canonical Ltd. ) was never an option .
My switch to Debian fortunately , as far as I was concerned , coincided with the release of the installation friendly Buster ( hybrid ISOs / Calamares ) .

After microsoft's villainy in not allowing me to upgrade from windows 10 to 11 ... (under pressure from my roommates) I still bought two new laptops with windows 11 .... to keep the house peace
Universal law of vexation ; since then my housemates use less and less these "windows" laptops , but work more and more with their own " Debian " Single Boot laptops ... which are now running under Bookworm 12.1 / Cinnamon DE .

multi-booting has never really been for me .


Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

[lospala]

I think it would not be fair if I said that Ubuntu has been bad during the 17 years that I used it successfully until its version 20.04. Starting with version 22.04 Ubuntu changed its install policy and directed it towards snap. That was the point at which I stopped liking Ubuntu, not because I was conservative but because some packages needed for photography were no longer included in the repositories, .

Before Ubuntu and for a short time I tried Knoppix live cd which was my very first start with Linux.

[Nili]

I have had only good experiences over the years with Linux OS'es, where i have failed somewhere, it was only because i made some stupid mistake.

Ubuntu, Mint, #!, BunsenLabs, Debian, Devuan, Alpine, Fedora and currently openSUSE. All these OS's have given me only fun and fulfilled my needs.

[trinidad]

My distro hopping ended with Debian Jessie. I follow some other distros and run a few just for my own enjoyment and information; like Bunsen, Devuan, and LMDE but otherwise stick with Debian gnome stable. My first Linux was Suse in the Windows 2000 era after which I switched to Kubuntu for several years I guess until 16.04 LTS. After that it just seemed too buggy for me, and KDE became too much GUI overkill. I think that was the era where hardware support began to be a serious endeavor and issue for Linux. I came to Suse initially from IBM mainframe, shortly after buying my first PC, a Compaq 486 with Windows 3.1, a machine which actually never died, and probably still works. Nowadays running Linux is generally a good experience no matter what distro you try, though Debian far and away gives you the most user support, user control, and user system monitoring and tailoring experience. Ubuntu really is a sister distro to Debian but like others here I am not fond of some its recent adoptions. As far as networking 22.04 is by far irs buggiest LTS version. As far as a new user distro I heartily recommend Linux Lite. Jerry seems to understand how to smooth over some of the Ubuntu quirks to provide an uncomplicated experience for the new user. Most of the pain I ever had with Linux was with RHEL on other peoples Linux servers, so I guess that would be my least liked. And... Trihex you can do all the things you want to with Debian just as easy as Kali, you just don't get that cool dragon... Gotta tease a little, I enjoy your posts.

TC

[BBQdave]

Ubuntu 22.04 was pretty bad. The software center never really worked right, snaps were problematic and lots of graphical glitches no matter the session I chose. I expected an LTS release to be much less bug ridden after a year of use, it was disappointing, especially on supported hardware...

I too had odd experiences with Ubuntu 22.04LTS. It seemed like a work in progress, which is fine. But was not smooth. I think they are still sorting out SNAPS. And though a personal preference, the DE feels like a smashed combination of GNOME and traditional style - with function odd and contradictory.

For example, in GNOME I like that I can strike the Super Key and bring up the application dock and separate layered open windows - select what I want and focus on that choice. With Ubuntu, you have duplicate functions in selecting applications and windows that get in the way of each other. Again a personal preference, but not a smooth experience. It feels like they are chopping up GNOME. I think it would have been better to continue on with their own DE Unity and develop that to the specific user experience they want.

Debian 12 (Gnome) is a great experience with smooth function

[canci]

For me it's everything rpm-based. I can stomach a lot of things, but using all of these slow package managers on rpm-based distros is like pulling teeth.

Otherwise, anything POSIX-based I'm usually comfortable with.

[NFT5]

MXLinux: Amazed at what those guys have done. If only they hadn't mucked about with permissions.....

I'm curious: what have they done with permissions?

In Debian I can do most things that need administrative privileges with sudo. Of course, some things do need root and, generally I agree with how these are split. However, with MX it is necessary to drop to root to perform even the most basic tasks - a level that I didn't want to give to users where I can control their access better with sudo. My opinion, of course, but in an organisation with multiple users that suited better.

[None1975]

Manjaro Linux.....

[sunrat]

This topic has turned into a flood of strange individual opinions, many of which don't match my experience.
I tried Manjaro for a short time, it seemed to work just as well as Debian but no better, so back to Debian.
I used MX-17 and MX-18 for quite some time and don't recall sudo working any different.
I used Suse and Mandrake/Mandriva years ago and their package managers worked, although apt is better.

Ultimately this topic is pointless IMO.