Ubuntu's user interface upgrades as of 11.10 (the "unity" interface) sucked so bad that I refuse to use Ubuntu beyond verision 10.04 on desktops/laptops.
11.10 was when I switched over to Mint and never looked back, and it seems that doing so was a wise move, given the Amazon adware/spamware/spyware that Canonical saw fit to include in more recent versions.
Even though Mint includes proprietary binaries (like Flash and Audio/Video codecs), which may or may not contain opaque questionable material, at least the third party non-open-source software is something that (arguably) improves the distribution and actually serves a purpose for me, as the end user.
Mint has changed over time too, though, and now I'm thinking about moving to a personally customized Debian image, and a hobbyist project. Hopefully it won't prove to be too demanding to pull off.
Your feelings about Unity, and your preference for Mint because things regularly break and it gives you learning opportunities, may be things you really want to get said. But they are not really relevant to the question you are replying to.
I too was pushed to mint after 11.10 but I'm sick of Mint now too. Not only do upgrades break it frequently, but I find small 'glitches' that end up taking up too much time tracking down. Stuff like Wifi dropping, and icons in my taskbar dissapearing, random browser crashes etc.
What I did was decide to sit down and do an Arch install. Yes it takes time, and yes you have to know what you're doing. But I invested the time up front, and now it runs very reliably, and faster on the same machine.
I say if you want to GSD the best thing to do is set up something like Debian, Arch or Gentoo and invest the time setting it up so you can use it without problems later. I don't know about you but I have better things to do than screw with an OS all time, I have real work to do. These "harder" distros are great for that.
I am using Mint 16 now; first time using it. Previously I was using Ubuntu. I had to switch to Mint because we got W540's at work which has a lot of new hardware that is not currently supported (well). I wasn't able to get Ubuntu working on it properly, but I have been impressed with Mint so far. The only issue right now is that it doesn't see my nvidia card and so I have to use the integrated chip instead of the discrete one. I'm hoping that Mint 17 fixes the issue.
How hard is it to get a custom system up and running from Arch? I haven't done anything like that in a few years although I've had a lot of experience with setting up custom FreeBSD systems. Is it more or less like that?
What I'm reaching for is something that "just works" and that I can work on reliably instead of having to fix obscure problems all the time. I figure once I set something up that works, I can simply create an image of it to use later.
Arch isn't that hard to set up, it's still easier than Gentoo. You just have to set it up from an explicit point of view. You must know every detail of what you want, and each item up, rather than a "10 clicks and I have an OS now" type of setup.
It helps to have a good knowledge of Linux to do it, because you know where things should go and where to look if there is a problem, but it doesnt' require you to become a kernel hacker just to get it to a prompt.
Honestly though, the only thing that attracts me to Linux in the first place is digging into the source and pulling apart the pieces and putting them back together again, so that I can understand the tools I use more intimately.
To me, distribution projects like Debian, Arch & Gentoo serve as a useful source for complete repositories of working, interoperable packages, moreso than they serve as a convenient provider of a working operating system.
I tend to chalk up buggy, quirky work-arounds and long waits for bug fixes in Linux as the price I'm willing to pay to be able to see the source, and receive the software for free. Annoying glitches are something I wouldn't tolerate from Apple or Microsoft, if I'm going to shell out for the high price tags placed on their operating systems.
I'm with you 100%. Often times I do use Linux as a dumb platform to do work like I would Windows or OSX, but occasionally I love tearing into it and messing with it, which is priceless in my book.
In your experience, is Debian less prone to breakage when upgrading from stable to stable than Ubuntu with its release upgrades? I've run Debian but I have never been patient enough to stay with a stable release and find out.
To be fair, Unity in 11.10 was quite broken and slow and resource hungry, but they fixed that in 12.04 and 12.10. I understand if people don't like Unity, but it's been getting faster and better than in the earlier versions. Personally I use cinnamon.
11.10 was when I switched over to Mint and never looked back, and it seems that doing so was a wise move, given the Amazon adware/spamware/spyware that Canonical saw fit to include in more recent versions.
http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1182
Even though Mint includes proprietary binaries (like Flash and Audio/Video codecs), which may or may not contain opaque questionable material, at least the third party non-open-source software is something that (arguably) improves the distribution and actually serves a purpose for me, as the end user.
Mint has changed over time too, though, and now I'm thinking about moving to a personally customized Debian image, and a hobbyist project. Hopefully it won't prove to be too demanding to pull off.