Once I was out of High School and College, I was glad to get way from peer pressure. I was glad my choice of shoes, pants and shirt was not the subject of other’s conversations. I was never part of the privileged or influential few. I was rather part of the unimportant masses. Those judged by others and marginalized by many. I thought that was over, but I recently realized that once again I was chasing after something that, in the end, really didn’t matter. What was I chasing? The latest version of a software package.
I have been running Manjaro Linux for the last year and a half. I like the distro and it has run well for that time. My only gripe was about the sound. For me, it was always not quite right. I had trouble keeping my speakers running, but my headset jack seemed to work all the time without a problem. I wanted a non-Ubuntu, rolling release distribution. Updating every year or so was just ridiculous and I really am not crazy about the direction that the Ubuntu people are going. I use the XFCE desktop and I has been running great. I slowly realized I didn’t need most of the updates that were being incorporated into my install every couple of weeks. It was then I realized I didn’t need a bleeding edge version of my software packages. I also didn’t need a rolling release. I also realize using a long term release candidate was ok. After some looking around and evaluating, I have settled on Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE). I have always liked Cinnamon as well. Now I know I have been waiting for LXQt, but I also am not ready to use the version that is out there now. So I backed up what I wanted to back up and went ahead and Gparted my drive to prepare for re-installation from a USB 3.0 image.
So far I have loved my new install. I am setup for dual boot. I am going to get a version of LXQt installed to see what it looks like. Not sure if it will be Siduction or Manjaro with LXQt. I don’t need bleeding edge versions, or a super small memory footprint. I just need something to run this old Toshiba Laptop and be able to do the few things I do with a laptop.
I have stepped away from peer pressure once again and it feels good.
There is no right or wrong distribution, only what works for you.