I started thinking about this, which distro would you use for a family PC? I would use Debian Stable or CentOS on a family PC myself, as both are rock-solid distros, and Debian Stable's going from three years support down to two, while CentOS is still supported for 10 years, although Debian Stable is a bit easier to use than CentOS.

Which distro would you guys use though?

My own personal hardware would be running Arch though, this is more for the family PC, in which stability would be a bigger concern than running bleeding-edge software.

That was one sentence.

Take a breath, and lets get some facts right. Debian support is for the life of the release while it is Stable (approx 2 years has been more) plus 1 year of support as Old Stable. 2 + 1 = 3.

Debian because it is what I use and know. I know nothing of CentOS so cannot comment.

CentOS is basically RHEL without the Redhat branding and paid support.

I would NOT use cent on a home desktop as the main OS
not even for JUST ME ,if it is new hardware .

I use OpenSUSE 12.3 ( will be 13 in about 6 months )
and i use my ScientificLinux 6.4 install for the software that NEEDS THAT os
and suse as my main everyday OS

Now i do have sl6 installed as the main OS on a desktop but is is an almost ancient 12 year old computer and is using sl6 because it is still supports the hardware ( mostly) .


so staying in the RPM family of OS's have a look at OpenSUSE 13.1

A bit too stability-oriented, I take it?

Now as for Arch, I would gladly run it on my own hardware, but not on hardware that others will be using, Debian Stable + Xfce or MATE would probably be better there.

CentOS is GREAT in the office
on a home set up ...
Getting multimedia set up and working without FUBARing the install .....

the repos that have vlc,gstreamer,xine,... are a bit incompatible with each other and with the updates and base repo

vlc 1 is in the rpmforge repos
there is a vlc2 package but in a non std repo "linuxtech"
linuxtech is incompatible with rpmforge and epel and elrepo

Now once you have navigated through that MINEFIELD safely it is a solid OS

You also have to use the long term support firefox 17 or manually install firefox 25

somethings are not easily installed
Gimp2.8 - is near impossible
Gimp 2.6 is installed

Gimp2.8 needs a newer version of glib installed ( that is a fun one to do )

Yeah, would be better off with Debian Stable.

I did know that, lol. I should have said I know nothing how it works etc. I'm not a lover of RPM distros at all since I couldn't get RedHat8 to work after installing it back when it was new.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/review...cat.php/cat/36
It just works!
Trev

I think it depends what you mean by family PC and what you're asking.
If you're asking what I would personally run in my household then I'd choose either Debian (and probably Sid) because it's what I know and use or Ubuntu if somebody wanted Unity.
I'd not worry about stability at all for home use as if there's more than one machine available, home and / are separated and backups are taken it takes an hour or less to install a distro even if it does go bang or in Ubuntu's case the next version comes out. To me home PCs are used for things like multimedia, web browsing and gaming where having the latest packages can make things a darn sight easier. I'd not like to try to install Netflix* or Steam on CentOS, for example.


*Not that I've bothered on Sid, but I suspect it is a lot easier and I've heard it is on Fedora.

I tend to use debian sid for media type things like creating and editing media type content. But if you have multiple PCs, 1GB of updates per month can be a real pain to keep up with, times however many machines you have. I tend to run debian stable on most things because of the lack of update bandwidth needed.

One of the nice things about modern PCs is that you can boot from almost any media. So I have a couple USB storage bootable options laying around. Which is nice for when a family member can say that they need X, Y, Z (like the latest java update) and don't have it or can't do it on their current setup. I can boot the USB linux on my machine, update and configure it for what they want. And then literally take the USB linux over to their machine and boot it. Then they're doing their thing until you can make those changes on their local bootable media without the interruption of you kicking them out of their chair while they're trying to do stuff.

I've been using Mageia 3 for the family. It is very stable and setup for everyone to use with ease. I currently have KDE4 installed but I personally use Openbox. The wife & grandkids use it without much fuss.

If I were creating a family computer, I'd avoid bleeding-edge distros but I don't think you need enterprise-class stability. For me, the problem with Debian has always been that it takes so much trouble to do anything non-standard, but my demands are probably more non-standard than the average family! I'd go for the LTS version of Mint, or for PCLinuxOS.

And avoid CentOS or Scientific.

Manjaro most likey..