Best Linux Distros 2014

Best Linux Distros 2014

If you're looking for the best Linux distros around, on this page you'll find a collection of every Linux distribution that should suit your needs.

Most Beautiful Linux Distro: Bodhi Linux

This is an easy choice: Bodhi Linux. Bodhi Linux uses the Enlightenment window manager, which has always occupied a unique niche. Enlightenment is beautiful, lightweight, and extremely customizable. Its flexibility has worked against it in the past, because when you install the stock Enlightenment it takes a fair bit of work to set it up as it's more of a framework than a finished desktop environment. The Bodhi team have done a great job of taming Enlightenment and giving users a beautiful, ready-to-use implementation.

Best Enterprise Linux Distro: SUSE and Red Hat

This is a tie: SUSE and Red Hat. I can't pick one over the other because they're both rock-solid, they're excellent community members, and they have similar product lines.

SUSE has always been a top enterprise Linux distro, but it is not so well-known in North America. They hold a number of bragging rights: first mainframe Linux and most popular mainframe Linux with 80% market share, half of the world's largest supercomputers run SUSE, most widely-used commercial enterprise Linux distribution in China (more than China's Red Flag Linux), and it dominates in retail--even Walmart uses SUSE Linux Enterprise Point-of-Service.

SUSE and Red Hat both have formed large networks of key partnerships with enterprise vendors like IBM, HP, Intel, Cisco, Dell, Fujitu, and SAP. These are essential to penetrating the enterprise and staying there, and we also enjoy a trickle-down benefit of features, hardware support, and wider acceptance of Linux at all levels. Most Linux enterprise growth has come at the expense of proprietary Unix, and not so much from Microsoft Windows. But Linux has exercised considerable influence in the datacenter by being open and supporting open standards, and providing interoperability even when proprietary competitors were actively trying to foil it. Now we see vendors who used to be hostile to Linux are now open to it, and have become contributors, and Red Hat and SUSE both deserve credit for helping to make this happen.

Most Important for the Future of Linux Distro: DouDou

Where do Linux gurus come from? From baby newbies. How do baby newbies become gurus? From using DouDou Linux. DouDou is an excellent, safe platform for children to explore and learn skills the fun way. It comes with the superior Gcompris and Childsplay suite of educational software, multimedia production software, and challenging brain games. DouDou is simplified and locked-down, and includes Dan's Guardian for some protection against Internet badness. DouDou is also an good platform for adult beginners.

Best Laptop Linux Distro: Lubuntu

Again I must go with a member of the Ubuntu family. Lubuntu flies on older, less-powerful laptops. Lubuntu is Ubuntu-ized LXDE, which is one of the lightest-weight graphical environments you can use without sacrificing a lot of functionality. You'll get longer battery life, and have more system resources available for more demanding applications such as audio recording or graphics editing.

Best Desktop Linux Distro: Xubuntu

People seem to forget that Ubuntu is much larger than the Unity desktop, and judge all of Ubuntu by that alone. I don't much care for Unity, but I do like the whole *buntu ecosystem. You can reliably upgrade to new releases, which is not true of a lot of desktop-oriented Linuxes. It's engineering brilliance to support multiple distros like Xubuntu, Edubuntu, Kubuntu, Ubuntu Server, and all the rest from a common core and common repos, and the only distro with bigger repos is Debian, so you can almost always find what you want. If you can't then you have the giant thundering herd of Ubuntu PPAs (Personal Package Archives) to get software from.