User experience

What sets these distro contenders apart?

The focus of this Roundup is to identify a distribution that’s best suited for newbies. We are looking for an option that’s easy to use, while still offering users a chance to learn and enjoy themselves horsing around. This, we feel, is the key for any distribution looking to retain and attract novice users.

By a quirk of fate, and admittedly deliberate deviousness in selecting the KDE edition of Manjaro, our selection of distributions has provided us with five different desktop environments. Each of these comes with their own pros and cons and are an important factor for newbies when deciding on a new distribution to go for.

But you can’t look at any one element, such as the desktop environment, to gauge the overall usefulness of a distribution. The complete distribution is greater than the sum of its parts.

Deepin 8/10

This distro is fast and responsive. Its best feature is its home-grown desktop and the myriad applications for everyday use. You can type Deepin into the launcher for a list of all the custom applications. Run the Introduction tool for a video intro to the distribution. You can also make cosmetic changes to the desktop, such as enable/ disable window effects, switch the desktop mode from the default Fashionable to Efficient, etc. These changes can also be accomplished from the settings manager.

The absence of a live environment, is unfortunate. Also disappointing is the lack of focus on hosting quality documentation on topics other than the desktop environment and the home-grown apps.

The project was originally based on Ubuntu but has shifted to Debian now. This means that the project features thoroughly tested applications to provide a stable and robust desktop experience.

Elementary OS 8/10

Elementary OS’S claim to fame is its custom desktop environment, called Pantheon, and an assortment of desktop applications to go with it. It favours a paywhat-you-want model, letting you decide what amount, if any, to pay for the distro. It also lets you pay an amount for many of the apps available in the App Center.

The distribution features a curious selection of default applications, such as the Epiphany browser. The selection is a further attempt to provide a fast and lightweight distro. Based on Ubuntu, its quite easy to flesh out the distribution with additional and more popular applications.

You don’t have to launch the App Center to search for an application. Click Applications on the top-left of the desktop and type. All results will be displayed, and if no matches are found, the distribution recommends searching for the specified keyword in the App Center.

Manjaro 10/10

Manjaro is based on Arch Linux – one of the most beloved rolling-release distributions. Like its parent, Manjaro is incredibly malleable and easy to extend. It’s also one of the most thoroughly documented distros, and you’re unlikely to ever lack help you should run into trouble with it.

You’re greeted with a helpful Welcome screen when you boot into Manjaro. It provides quick links to different avenues of help, such as the forum, wiki, etc. You can also change the language of the Welcome screen using the button on the top left.

With its focus on usability and its rolling nature, which means you never have to perform a fresh installation but can keep the system updated by regularly installing updates as they roll in, the distribution offers plenty to please advanced users as well as beginners looking for an intuitive distribution to get started with.

Solus 9/10

Solus is a rolling-release distribution like Manjaro. All available applications undergo testing by the developers before the distro offers them to users. This ensures that users don’t accidentally break anything by installing an untested bleeding-edge application. Solus doesn’t ship with a backup utility out of the box, but you can easily install one from the Software Center.

Like Deepin and Elementary OS, it too features a custom desktop environment. Budgie doesn’t support creating icons on the desktop by default. You can change this by launching the Budgie Desktop Settings utility, which lets you configure various elements of the desktop, as well as the Raven sidebar. You can also add an additional panel at the top of the screen, with its own array of widgets, such as Caffeine. If enabled, the Caffeine widget ensures that your system is not suspended or locked for the specified duration.

Zorin OS 8/10

If you’re dissatisfied with the default desktop layout, you can change it using the Zorin Appearance utility. It provides three different layouts. You can also use this utility to tweak the location of the pane and add other elements to it, such as the date.

Like all the other distributions, Zorin OS can play a wide assortment of audio and video files out of the box. Also on offer is Zorin Connect, a custom utility to connect with your Android devices.

Our past experiences with Zorin OS have always been positive, and we’ve been impressed with its speed and performance. But the latest release is disappointing. Often the desktop presents inexplicable jarring artefacts. When you move between categories on the launcher, sometimes the content doesn’t change correctly. Moving the mouse over the area results in the changes being displayed, similar to a scratch card.