Often simple solutions = bad solutions or rushed solutions, while dealing with complex matters. No matter if we are discussiong of food, politics, dressing, IT and so on. They are intrinsically complex matters, where there isn't a solution which is both simple and good.. You can get a big mac if you are in rush, but you will never get a good meal this way, you can dress yourself on a big store, but you will never get something on par with a tailor made suit. You can install aa random *buntu, but you will never get an OS as fast, as customizable, as easy to maintain as a good distro Like an Arch Linux or a Gentoo. Arch and Gentoo requires has a learning curve, but fortunately there are some middle way distros like Manjaro or Sabayon that are easy enough to install while retaining the freedom and the quality of the parent distros. But aside the details, seeing a flock heading to one direction is enough to decide to take another way, no matter the argument taken in account. It's a general rule that fails very rarely.
@odes90: Please elaborate on your reply. If this is another 'nix distro, there are those of us who would like to know more about it. And welcome to MDL.
Woof. Q4OS is not one that I would recommend to anyone whom I like !! The ONLY 'support' for it is a highly restricted forum where they delete any thread that asks about its numerous bugs - they also delete users who ask too many questions without any warning or notice. Another basically unsupported (or abandoned ??) distro is JustUseLinux - which is equally odd & buggy. How do I know these things ?? I have spent an overly ((UN?))reasonable amount of time installing & using both of the above - and gave up on both as well because they are too messed up for daily usage IMO. I enjoy using Linux and also like to give promising looking distros a fair bit of time & effort. The 2 mentioned above failed badly and were good for entertainment only...now deleted. Also I would never recommend paying for ZorinOS to anyone. It is a very limited OS and still likely to be somewhat buggy as its devs aimed it squarely at the win8 crowd for free, whilst trying to get classic desktop users to buy it from their ultra-slow FTP with their very limited forum-only user based support. When I bought it & tried it for a while it was not a good experience and the devs are most notably COMPLETELY absent from all support - leaving that to users to solve on their own. T'was NOT money well spent IMO. For my own usage (as a windows refuge) I prefer the look & feel of what most will call the old, 'classic desktop' style. I have found that either Linux Mint with Mate or Ubuntu Mate deliver this comfort level with the best reliability. To be clear=> I say the above for ME and for MY uses. (I keep windows around as well - and find that it is delightful to run it in a VM under Linux.) Regarding the journey from windows to Linux, I say this: It is not nearly as big a deal as so many make it out to be. Folks constantly seem to forget that an OS is what works -UNDER- the apps, just like the foundation of a house. An OS needs to be strong & reliable rather than flashy & cute. Do you know any folks who give their house's foundation more than a passing glance ?? Know anyone who puts loads of time & effort into the appearance of their house's foundation ?? For most folks, if it holds up the house OK & doesn't have bad cracks and/or leaks - its all good. As for making the journey of OS change itself, I FIRST suggest considering what most folks really, actually do with their PCs as the most important question to answer... Given that most PC users are not coders or gamers the answers are usually routine, common stuff. All that routine, common stuff works even better with a Linux foundation than it ever did with most windows versions. Right now desktop PC usage is at an all-time low because of the proliferation of handheld devices as well as even more folks literally being driven away from PCs because of what windows has become in recent years. All the above, together, points to it being an excellent time to do exactly the opposite of what 'the herd' is doing: Get deeper into being a desktop PC user !!! Get parts while the prices are down & build yourself a very nice PC !! Download & try a bunch of Linux distros to see which one (if any) is comfortable for you. But above all=> Don't get sucked in by any ideas saying that making an OS change is worrisome for general PC use. It isn't.