I have tried many distros and have to say: Arch Linux most definitely is the best of 'em, if you can handle the extra work it brings. I personally prefer the LXDE desktop environment because it is both lightweight, nice and highly configurable.

EDIT: nevermind, old thread...

archlinux has a dangerous amount of low-quality community scripts (AUR) which don't undergo any review process, because there are not enough devs to keep everything in the official repositories or even enforce a review workflow

in addition, arch doesn't have any real stabilization policy: they move anything from the testing repo to the main repos as soon as upstream (the software developer of a package) says "my software version should be stable" ... which is regularly terribly wrong

every one of them has problems, so "the best of 'em" can be disproven for all of them

As I said, it's the kind of system that requires more work from you. 'AUR' is short for 'Arch User Repository', everyone with a bit of good reason and responsibility knows how to handle these. For my experience, the core packages are better maintained than with most other package managers.

I know what AUR is, because I contributed to it. And it's not about "how to handle these". They are just unreviewed, low-quality scripts most of the time that can very well screw things (including your system) up.

The problem is that arch doesn't have a concept on how to improve these things or doesn't even want to. Other distributions have already solved parts of those problems. But many distros are too stubborn to take ideas from others and integrate them.

Yeah, I agree, that's a general problem I guess...

Haven't been into Ubuntu since a while, what's that "phone home" ? All I got from google is about their phone os, touch or smth like that, are they forcing some tablet/phone functionality for desktop users?

"Phone home" in this context means the software is connecting to a server and sending data there. Not sure how that applies to Ubuntu, though cases from other software may include license checks or data about the user being sent to a server.

Haven't heard from the mobile Ubuntu version in a while... Though I was quite happy to get an alternative to the existing mobile OSs, I don't really like any of these...

I think he meant built in by default Amazon* online search that shows online results when a user is searching something using Dash. There's an option to disable it and it's possible to remove it completely.

*Ubuntu probably comes with more search-enhancing webapps preinstalled. I didn't pay attention, just removed it all.

Arch has been the best distro I've ever had because it has been rock solid now for over a year. Being a rolling release, I never have to upgrade anymore like with Ubuntu and I have the newest software. Even though it is "bleeding edge" I honestly have never had a breakage. I don't use the AUR so I've never had problems there either.

I run Mint with MATE on all my Linux rigs except my primary Linux rig. It has an AMD FX quad core with an AMD Radeon 7850, and I use Mint with Cinnamon on it. I mainly chose Cinnamon just to get some hands on time with it.
That's one of the reasons I switched to Linux Mint, and also recommend it to others. I used Ubuntu for years, but switched to Mint when I saw that abomination Unity.

I've been attempting to work with Linux Mint on a USB with persistent state, but have been having enough problems to consider using another distro. So far, I've reformatted the USB twice now. First, everything worked great on the first boot. On the second boot it wouldn't even start up. The second time around, there seems to be things wrong with some of the apps. It's slower and will not load many sites on the Internet in Firefox and will not complete all system updates. Lastly, it now won't shutdown and has corrupted my admin desktop (cinnamon).

I like the fact that Arch is much more streamlined, as I don't really have too much I need such as the office programs, paint programs, etc. However, upon researching Arch, it doesn't include some of the codecs and other background stuff I would need.

What kind of "on a USB"? Sounding like a hardware issue.

Just a regular 8GB USB flash drive. Finally had a chance to try it on the machine I intended it for, and it doesn't work. I'm going to stop working with Mint and try Arch… or maybe something for older machines if I can find anything that will work.