Is Windows Boring, Try These Linux OS

Elementary OS [ The most beautiful OS ]

• There is there no doubt elementary OS is the most beautiful Linux-based distro. The reason is simple: It is being developed by some of the great designers active in the open source world, so they have taken the design to every nook and corner of the distro.

• In order to provide a consistent experience across core apps (such as browser or text editor), they have either created their own applications or picked the ones which fit neatly into their own design philosophy - for example they are using Midori instead of Firefox or Chrome.

• Now that does pose some challenges as this browser won't be able to offer the features that Chrome or Firefox offers thanks to extensions and plugins.

• Elementary OS is clearly inspired by Mac OS X; as they have a dock, top panel and applications have buttons at left side; the grey theme also reminded me of my Macbook.

• It's a neat OS to try, which looks aesthetically great and does work out of the box.

Click to view

openSUSE [ Best for desktop ]

• I spend a majority of my work life on my desktop; it's a powerful machine capable of doing stuff like video encoding, image editing and regular writing.

• openSUSE has made it extremely easy to install third-party software through their 'One Click Install' from software.opensuse.org (I found it easier than manually adding PPAs in Ubuntu). They have a huge repository of software and you are likely to find your software for openSUSE.

• openSUSE has a gem of a tool called YaST - it's like a 'command center' of the entire PC and you can control almost every aspect of it.

• openSUSE also makes it extremely easy to install multiple desktop environments including - LXDE, Enlightenment, Gnome, Mate, KDE, and Xfce, on the same system side-by-side through YaST.

Click to view

Ubuntu MATE [ Best for laptop ]

• Laptops, unlike desktop PCs may not be that mighty when it comes to hardware and there are possibilities of proprietary hardware, that's where Ubuntu MATE does the job the best. Based on Ubuntu, MATE makes it extremely easy to deal with any proprietary hardware.

• In addition, MATE offers a great balance between performance and using resources efficiently. The interface of MATE is friendly, no learning curve, and looks extremely polished on laptops.

• MATE believes in using fewer resources leaving them for your applications, which also translates into better battery life.

Click to view

Lubuntu [ The best dOS for old hardware ]

• All of us have old hardware; it is not waste. Linux can breathe new life into this hardware, you can use it as a common PC for the family, or donate to the needy. The million dollar question for this old hardware is: Which OS will work better on it? The answer is simply any distro with and LDXE desktop environment.

• Personally, I use Arch Linux on such hardware with LXDE slapped on top of it, but Arch can be a bit tricky for an average user so the best distro that you can get is Lubuntu.

• Lubuntu, thanks to its Ubuntu base will work fine on your older hardware. Since there are LTS version of Lubuntu you can install 14.04 on a machine and it will get support for 3 years; no need to upgrade it every six months. If your hardware is in service the next three years you can easily upgrade to the next version without reformatting your system.

• Here we've looked at Linux distros that take care of almost every computing need we may have. There is something for everyone and that's not using some "one size may fit all" solution. These distros are optimized for a particular task.

Chrome OS [ Best for working on internet ]

• Chrome OS is an operating system based on the Linux kernel and designed by Google to work with web applications and installed applications.