paupav Master Cheater Reputation: 13
Joined: 15 Apr 2011 Posts: 315 Location: P. Sherman 42, Wallaby Way, Sydney
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Posted: Tue Sep 27, 2016 4:48 pm Post subject: state of Linux desktop and Linux distros compared |
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State of Linux desktop & drivers
Currently most of linux desktops are moving away from X stack to Wayland as their default windowing system. Fedora 25 (currently in alpha) has Gnome 3.22 stack and Wenston +Wayland as default windowing system. Fedora is comunity distribution backed by Red hat.
Unity, default desktop environment on Ubuntu is only desktop environment which is moving to MIR which they've created in order to support their idea of convergence. It is backed by Canonical.
Another process that is happening is process of moving to sandboxed apps. Currently there are again 2 standards:
Flatpak - GNOME foundation - Red Hat - Learn more llink: http://flatpak.org/
Snaps - Ubuntu - Canonical - Learn more: http://snapcraft.io/
State of Linux drivers is improving fast for the AMD drivers. Currently there are no completely closed source drivers working on newer distributions. Open source driver is in great shape and working flawlessly, it is still missing only few OpenGl extensions and Vulkan support.
There is also another AMD driver that is refereed to as AMD hybrid driver which is currently working only for the selected GCN verisions. List of the working cards and driver can be found here: LINK. That is completely new driver. One part of it is built directly in to the Linux kernel (so you have to watch out which kernel version you have. You can download newer version from here: https://www.kernel.org/ and build it) and other part you have to install from their website.
GCN 1.0 architecture will be supported in Linux kernel 4.9 (you will just have to add flag while building kernel because it will be in alpha/beta stage).
GCN 1.1 architecture will be stable in Linux kernel 4.9, curently you have to add compiler flag
GCN 1.2 and newer are supported
nVidia proprietary driver is in good shape, open source driver is in bad shape. ubuntu based distros usually have both drivers in their repositories, but you can also download it from their website, installing process when downloading driver from nVidia's website can be a bit complicated for newbies.
Elementary OS
Latest release: elemtanry OS loki, built on top of Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Long Term Support).
Desktop: pantheon + plank (dock), very light weight, nice animations
Apps: Specially designed apps for this OS, mostly built using Vala and C, close relation with GNOME foundation, design pattern prefers GTK apps over Qt apps
Noise(Music player)
Scratch(Text editor)
Actually my favorite text editor.
Features:
-automatically saves any changes
-automatic indentation
-supports all common programming languages (highlighting)
Files
Site: elementary.io -> Distribution is free, just click on "Custom ammount" and write "0". You will be provided with download link.
[MORE DISTROS WILL BE ADDED SOON]
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