Hi Felix,
The "usual distro" of the day would be Ubuntu, with
MINT being a spin-off and with lightweight variants
such as Xubuntu or Lubuntu which default to install
less heavy graphical things than the normal Ubuntu.
MATE also is just yet another variant.
https://distrowatch.com/ has a "ranking" of top 100 distros, and
cataloging of
those and others. Today Ubuntu is down to 6th. #1, #3 & #4 are
Debian/Ubuntu-based, with Debian #7.
That actually is a ranking of how often people have read
about the various distros on distrowatch. Which I consider
a website for advanced users, usually those which are bored
by everybody using Ubuntu without checking alteratives ;-)
I have actually peeked at distrowatch while composing my
mail to check whether I have forgotten something big, but
my impression was not that some of the non-Ubuntu distros
in the top 10 would be easy for beginners and having a big
user base which would be useful when people have questions.
Of course Ubuntu is a "candified" version of Debian, but
that is exactly why I am not using "raw" Debian. It took
effort to use Debian in the old days where it took less
effort to use Ubuntu. Today it takes effort to remove a
bit of the bloat from Ubuntu, unless you just shrug it
off, so I guess both are equally bad in their own ways.
Not sure what your problem with deletion in graphical
file managers is. Mine, in Ubuntu, just has to context
menu items for that. One "move to trash", one "delete".
So I can use whichever I prefer for the selected files.
My first choice has not been named here, and is not a Debian
derivation.
Is it OS/2? Or is it one of the Linux distros? Which?
Regarding the bloat: Sure, I have used fvwm variants
for a long time almost 20 years ago and was happy to
have a simple start menu based on a text config file.
But it does not actually annoy me that even the most
basic Ubuntu variants with lxde as user interface have
a start menu which can be edited by clicking a menu.
It is still reasonably lightweight. Xfce adds a bit of
extra comfort. I agree that the defaults of Gnome, Unity
and KDE are so complex that they slow down old computers.
Yet I think "just do a default install of lubuntu or
xubuntu" is better advice for those without experience
with Linux than "do a text mode bare debian install".
Of course, tastes do differ and there are plenty of
Linux flavor specifically for people who want very
low load for their hardware (small RAM, few files).
I really miss information about system requirements
on distrowatch. It only mentions default CPU type and
typical install size in megabytes, while flooding me
with version numbers of dozens of included packages
which seems to be more important for their readers.
For the top 10 in terms of distrowatch page views:
MX 1.5-1.9 GB (KDE, Plasma, Xfce, Deb, i386/x86_64/armhf)
Manjaro 1.9-2.7 GB (Gnome, KDE, Plasma, Xfce, Pacman/Snap, x86_64)
Mint 1.8-2.0 GB (Cinnamon, Mate, Xfce, Deb, x86_64/i686)
Pop! OS 2.2-2.7 GB (Gnome, Deb, x86_64, fewer filesystems)
EndeavourOS 1.9-2.0 GB (Xfce, Pacman, aarch64/x86_64 etc.)
Ubuntu 0.9-2.9 GB (Gnome, Deb, amd64/arm64/ppc64el/s390x)
Debian 0.3-3.7 GB (Gnome, Deb, many CPU architectures)
Elementary OS 1.4-1.5 GB (Pantheon, Deb, x86_64)
Fedora 0.5-2.0 GB (Gnome, rpm, aarch64/armhfp/x86_64)
openSUSE 0.14-4.3 GB (Gnome, KDE Plasma, Xfce, rpm, x86_64/i686/ppc64)
Deb, Pacman, rpm and Snap are different app package formats.
KDE, Plasma, Gnome, Cinnamon, Mate and Xfce are GUIs.
Note that all Ubuntu variants make it easy to install
the other GUIs, they are just listed by their defaults.
Pantheon also is a GUI, only mentioned for Elementary.
Most distros use LibreOffice, Debian also lists Calligra,
KOffice and GOffice. I guess it is easy to install those
in most other distros and/or remove LibreOffice there.
Looking at the size, openSUSE probably has an option to
easily install a text-only minimal version. You would not
shrink a typical Linux that much by just dropping Office.
Same for the smallest Debian or Fedora install sizes.
Xubuntu is like Ubuntu, but with Xfce GUI: 1.7-1.8 GB x86_64.
Lubuntu is the same, but with Lxde: 1.8-1.9 GB x86_64.
Kubuntu, with KDE Plasma, is larger: 2.6-2.7 GB x86_64.
Older versions also supported i686. As you see, many
distros use Deb package formats. Ubuntu recently drifts
towards snap, which bundles apps with their dependencies,
which feels very bloated to me compared to the classic
approach where packages just trigger installation of
dependencies and dependencies are shared system-wide.
Pacman is Arch Linux style, rpm is RedHat/Fedora/SUSE.
Snap can be added to Arch, Fedora, openSUSE and Manjaro
but has been criticized for being monopolized by Ubuntu
vendor Canonical: Packages are distributed only by them.
Deb (from Debian) packaging and rpm are real classics,
so you get many apps for a Linux based on those :-)
Sorry about the off-topic ;-) Eric
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