[Tutor] OT: Recommendations for a Linux distribution to dual-boot with Win7-64 bit

[Wolfgang Maier]

On 28.06.2016 18:58, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 28, 2016 at 07:58:22AM -0700, Alex Kleider wrote:
>>
>>
>> On 2016-06-27 20:48, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
>>
>>> Also Debian. Not Ubuntu.
>>
>> Can you elaborate why you specifically exclude Ubuntu?
>
> I've been bitten by an Ubuntu install where half of the GUI apps were
> unstable and simply didn't work. They either wouldn't launch at all, or
> they'd launch and as soon as you tried to do something they'd crash. And
> no, it wasn't using the unstable repo.
>
> And then Ubuntu went to Unity, and a few other annoyances which
> individually wouldn't matter much, but the overall feel is just ...
> wrong. For instance, Mark Shuttleworth is now suggesting that Ubuntu is
> going to lead the way to a brave new world of package management "snap":
>
> http://kmkeen.com/maintainers-matter/
>
> No thank you, I don't want to get my software directly from the vendor,
> at least not exclusively.
>
> I just get the feeling that Ubuntu is keen to disrupt working systems
> just for the sake of disruption, and that the community is filled with
> the Cascade of Attention-Deficit Teenagers that Jamie Zawinski
> thinks so highly of </sarcasm>.
>
> And then I noticed that they have a *tutorial* to teach people how to
> sign their Code Of Conduct, said tutorial starting with "First, create a
> Launchpad account":
>
> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Forums/CoCSA_Tutorial
>
> at which point I decided they've lost the plot.
>

ok, this *very* subjective Ubuntu-bashing by Steven, begs a contrary 
opinion:

I'm running Ubuntu (currently 14.04, going to switch to 16.04 soon) on 
my laptop in a dual-boot configuration since several years now - without 
any problem worth mentioning here. The Windows was Windows 7 first, now 
since half a year is Windows 10 (which by itself has lots of issues 
still, but none related to dual booting).

Not everybody likes Unity, but if you want a more traditional look and 
feel and you're worried about performance, you can always go for Ubuntu 
Mate, which I'm using on another system and have nothing to complain about.

Regarding snap packages, the thing that concerns me about them is that 
canonical, once more, tries to develop something separately from the 
rest of the Linux world. The concept itself, however, is not a diabolic 
invention by them (as Steven likes to put it). Look at FlatPak, which is 
the cross-Linux equivalent of snap packages and sees now better support 
by the latest Fedora release 
(https://fedoramagazine.org/introducing-flatpak/).

Ubuntu has an extremely large (for a Linux distribution) user base and 
as pointed out by others that's a clear advantage when you try to solve 
problems with it.

Regarding file system access, I never bothered to set up a dedicated 
shared partition just for data exchange. Ubuntu reads and writes the 
NTFS-formatted regular Windows partition without any problem (since 
years as I said already). Of course, the other way around does not work 
so you have to remember to copy things over to the Windows partition if 
you want to have them available in Windows.

As you can maybe guess from my rather moderate tone here, I am not very 
much into Linux distro wars. I'm using a Fedora machine at work (on a 
triple(!) boot machine (with Windows 7 and OS X)), which also works very 
well and if you go for *any* major distribution you will probably be 
fine. Just don't be afraid of Ubuntu because certain people have strong 
feelings about it.

Best,
Wolfgang