I'm wanting to get a Linux distro setup on my computer. I have Ubuntu 12.04 setup right now, but I'm not entirely happy with the Unity interface. It's not as customizable as I would like. I also have been having problems getting ATI drivers to work without crashing my system. What are everyone's favorite Linux distros. One of my friends says Linux Mint is good, but I don't know if he has an ATI card or not. Also, I'm on a multimonitor setup.

I don't know about AMD hardware support, but I can definitely recommend OpenSUSE or Fedora as stable, powerful and user-friendly distros. If you aren't afraid to get your hands dirty you could also have a look at Debian, but you might have a harder time getting all you hardware to function correctly.

There probably are a lot of other good distros, but these are the ones I've used recently.

If you don't like the power and design of Ubuntu, you could consider its lightweight cousin Lubuntu. All the same software as Ubuntu except its default desktop shell is LXDE.

When it comes to "which distro is best for AMD hardware", they're pretty much all the same, since AMD releases binary blob drivers. It's not like it's different for different distros. You'll have to choose one based on other criteria.

I think you just need to pick a different window manager besides Unity. I use Gnome 3 Classic currently. What problems are you having with your ATI drivers?

I think ubuntu is a great distro but it is not moving in a direction I particularly want to go. So recently I have started using gentoo as my distribution of choice. If you are looking for the ability to customize, you will definitely get that with gentoo.

I think ubuntu is a great distro but it is not moving in a direction I particularly want to go. So recently I have started using gentoo as my distribution of choice. If you are looking for the ability to customize, you will definitely get that with gentoo.

Haha, that's a little extreme. At least with Gentoo if your system sucks, you only have yourself to blame.

[quote name='jjd' timestamp='1351534535' post='4995117']
I think ubuntu is a great distro but it is not moving in a direction I particularly want to go. So recently I have started using gentoo as my distribution of choice. If you are looking for the ability to customize, you will definitely get that with gentoo.

Haha, that's a little extreme. At least with Gentoo if your system sucks, you only have yourself to blame.
[/quote]



I was lucky enough to work with a gentoo maintainer at my last job so I was able to get some good instruction and experience before taking the plunge. Since I mostly want to work on a stripped down system it works well for me. Also, the documentation and community support are excellent.

The main thing to keep in mind with AMD hardware is to pick a distro that was released close to the same year as your GPU, AMD drops support faster than their CEO changes his underwear so new distros tend to NOT work with older AMD hardware (the OSS driver lags behind so there is usually a gap of a few years where a given GPU is more or less unusable (This is even worse for laptops))

Okay. I guess I'll just have to download them all and test them out. I think I'll check out Fedora first.

Okay. I guess I'll just have to download them all and test them out. I think I'll check out Fedora first.

I used to use Fedora, but it was for servers, not desktop usage. If the only thing you don't like about Ubuntu is Unity, then why not install a different flavor of Ubuntu? As others have said, the AMD story is going to be pretty much the same across the board. When picking a distro, I see three main things you're deciding on. The default configuration, the package manager and the windowing system, so pick the windowing system and package manager you like the most, and customize from there.