Should Phoronix switch to a different "main" distro?

[mulenmar]

Fedora, I think. I don't use it myself -- got tired of segfaults when I tried it a few years ago-- but Michael does. Adding that extra bit of personal interest might make his job seem like less of a, well, job. Having secondaries of Clear Linux (to test effectiveness of optimizations) and Mint/Ubuntu LTS (older packages, but commonly-used) would be good too.

TIL that Ubuntu isn't even in the top 3 of DistroWatch for the last 6 months. :P

[Electric-Gecko]

Fair enough. Can I change my vote, as in, is it possible? I can't find any edit button.

Oh sorry. It appears that you can't. What an unfortunate shortcoming in the vBulletin forum software.
However, many new votes have flooded in since I updated the poll, so that one vote won't have much impact now.

I've started with Arch (with a little help) and like it. Up-to-date, easy to modify, perfect wiki to get started and I can do all the stuff on it I want. I've told a couple of friends about it and they think about switching from Windows directly to Arch too, while some of them are still... erm... "afraid" and want to try Ubuntu first.

You should totally recommend Manjaro to these friends. It's a more user-friendly derivative to Arch, which is what I'm using to type this. I started on Ubuntu, and Manjaro is the first distro that made me stop using Ubuntu permanently. It's arguably more user-friendly than Ubuntu, and it keeps the software up to date in a rolling release model. Despite Ubuntu's claims of better "stability" due to it's infrequent updates, I have had fewer bugs with Manjaro.

@Michael: Thank you for posting an article in response to this. I was hoping you would do that. But you still didn't address my point that your version of Ubuntu is heavily modified so that it's effectively no longer the same distribution that others have. If you used an Arch-based distro, it would probably be easier to replicate your setup. However, it does make sense that you would consider changing to something else when Ubuntu switches to Mir. That's a reasonable decision.

[oleid]

I'd prefer Debian or Archlinux, but with proprietary AMD drivers, if possible. Which, of course, would be more difficult with those two.

[Geopirate]

I chose Ubuntu because it's still IMO the easiest to install/manage for someone with little non-Windows/Mac experience. If you need to quickly look up a problem, the first/most relevant result on Google is still for Ubuntu. This will probably change when they actually make the change over to Mir by default, but I really don't see them getting that done in the next 3-4 months which is what they would need to do to have it in for 17.10 in the fall, and implementing that first in the LTS would be crazy even for them.

[geearf]

As long as phoronix uses up to date drivers and kernels, I really don't care.

[fedora-user]

Fedora is very good choice, it is up-to-date, stable and popular.

[mv.gavrilov]

Please make accient on Fedora Linux and Wayland it is Future of Linux.

[Hi-Angel]

You didn't vote "Ubuntu" based on that, did you?

If so, that's not the point of this poll. The point is to select your favourite. Voting Ubuntu doesn't mean you don't mind how it is; it means you would prefer it over something else.

You're creating controversy. On one hand you want peoples to vote one's favorite distro. Mine is Archlinux.

But on the other hand, the whole thing is about "what distro phoronix should use" — and I definitely would not advice Archlinux. If Archlinux was used for testing, new peoples would start with Arch — but Arch is not for newbies. The problem is not even installation, rather that if one don't know what system should look/work like, they may end up disappointed. For example, by default in Archlinux doesn't work middle-click scroll in gtk3 apps — if you didn't know that you have to setup it yourself, you'd be disappointed by the discrepancy in gtk2, qt vs gtk3.

[villeneuve]

I'd prefer another Ubuntu-based distro like KDE neon or Xubuntu once Ubuntu moves to Mir.

[sarmad]

I voted Ubuntu. Ubuntu is still the most widely supported distro by both software and hardware providers so it makes sense to use it for benchmarking. Down the road once Ubuntu switches to Mir there will probably need to be more than one main distro, one for Mir benchmarks and one for Xorg and Wayland.