10 Linux Distros Perfect For Holiday Gift-Giving
This holiday season, why not give the gift of Linux? It's fun, practical, and free. Here are 10 Linux distros perfect for nearly everyone on your list.
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It's time for the end-of-year holidays, when so many busy IT professionals struggle to find the right gift for family, friends, and colleagues. If you're still searching for the perfect present, the answer could be as close as the Internet -- Linux makes a great gift for the special people in your life.
Some might ask, "Why Linux?" when it comes to gift-giving. It's the perfect gift for several reasons. It's not likely that a person will end up with a stack of Linux distributions to return the day after the holiday party. Linux is practical and fun, allowing the recipient to learn new skills and join in a huge community while preparing for a life without ties to either Microsoft or Apple. Finally, Linux is free, and who doesn't need a few good gifts that come in below every company's limit on gifts to fellow employees?
[See 10 Great Tech Gifts For Under $100.]
Once you recognize what a great gift Linux makes, the question becomes which Linux distribution to give. Fortunately, the proliferation and forking of Linux versions means that there is a distribution for everyone, from buttoned-down business IT folks, to experimenters living outside the normal computing box, to kids dipping their toes into the deep-flowing waters of Linux.
Choosing a Linux distro can seem a daunting task given the sheer number of options from which to choose. According to the web site DistroWatch, there are more than 100 distributions available, some intended for a wide variety of uses, some designed for very specific applications. To help you figure out which distro would be perfect for the people on your gift list, we've winnowed the candidates down to 10.
[See a guide to choosing the right Linux distro for your organization.]
Most of the Linux distros on this list will be familiar to you, but there might be a few that are too specialized to have caught your eye. Those niche distros might be just the ticket for that hard to buy for co-worker, and could be the perfect gift to make sure that you "win" the office gift exchange.
There's no getting around the fact that choosing a Linux distro is a personal decision. If you know your gift recipient, and know the possible Linux distributions, then you have the best chance of ending up with a happy friend, relative, or co-worker at the end of the holiday gift exchange. Do you have a favorite distro? Do you think our suggestions mean we deserve a giant lump of proprietary coal in our stockings this year? Let us know what you think -- and which Linux you would like to receive this holiday season -- in the comments section below.
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When you're thinking of a gift for your co-worker who likes a solid business desktop but might be ready to take the leap into Linux, then OpenSUSE is your distro. OpenSUSE has a solid, professional desktop, one-click software installation through an online portal at opensuse.org, and YaST (Yet Another Setup Tool), a GUI tool that allows for full configuration and management of the computing environment without having to learn all of the Linux command-line incantations.
OpenSUSE has a huge community and versions for many purposes beyond the desktop, but its comforting familiarity and convenience will be the key to making corporate IT users feel safe. Wrap it with a warm, comfy scarf and you'll have the perfect Linux-based holiday snuggle gift.
Your friend who built a custom home media server from hardware bought piece-by-piece from Fry's? That's a friend who needs Linux Mint tied up with a bow. Linux Mint is takes a Ubuntu chassis and puts a shiny, modern Cinnamon body on top. The result is a distro that some people say is the most popular consumer Linux. It is, by far, the most commonly searched Linux at distrowatch.com.
Linux Mint disturbs some open source purists because it comes with browser plug-ins and other utilities that are proprietary. They allow users to watch online videos and deal with other rich media immediately, rather than after hunting for open source alternatives. This community-developed distro may be the easiest out-of-the-box experience -- and a great option for someone eager to get Linux running on the new hardware they've assembled.
That friend of yours who's always going on about the "sharing economy"? That's a person who deserves Fedora as a holiday gift. Fedora, sponsored by Red Hat, is a cutting-edge distro that changes frequently. More important, unlike many of the other distributions, Fedora uses third-party software for its desktop and many of the drivers that come bundled with the OS. The team doesn't try to write everything by itself. As a result, Fedora is a great platform for sharing the fruits of lots of dev teams, and perfect for those who like the idea of spreading the adventure of open source software as widely as possible.
If you're working on a gift for that family member or friend who wants to be near the leading edge, but still wants to make sure the systems keep working, then sliding a copy of Ubuntu into their stocking makes sense. Ubuntu is a very popular variant of the Debian core, a variant that makes use of the Unity desktop environment. Since knowing how to use Unity pretty much brands the user as a member of the Ubuntu community, you should make sure it's the sort of community your gift recipient is ready to join. Given the power of the distro, it should be a community that your friends and family embrace. Go ahead -- get them the t-shirt, too.
If you want something more imaginative than socks to give a young person on your gift list, then Sugar Linux should be on your list. Sugar is a Fedora-based Linux distro with a bright, colorful desktop, simplified icons, and a range of applications designed for education.
For parents, one of the great features of Sugar is the ability to run it as "Sugar on a Stick," an operating system that can be run entirely from a USB thumb drive. For those youngsters, Sugar is an environment that can be theirs, where education and fun come together in a Linux-wrapped package.
You know that person who's deeply into maker culture? The one who's excited to tell you about the way they've used an array of Arduino controllers to precisely regulate the daily life of their pet turtle? They're the perfect person to receive Snappy Ubuntu Core for their holiday gift. Snappy Ubuntu Core is a small, minimalist distro that can run as an alternative to the Raspbian Linux that ships on Raspberry Pi boards.
And if your turtle-loving friend decides to start a cloud service, they can keep right on using Snappy Ubuntu Core. It's compact footprint and minimalist interface makes it a growing choice of those who are building SaaS clouds. The operating system becomes something that is small enough not to impose a performance penalty on the software being delivered. So, whether your friend is building systems to power DIY home automation or the next cloud blockbuster, Snappy Ubuntu Core will be a welcomed holiday gift.
There are some people who like to tinker with their equipment: Those folks like Arch Linux. If your friend or coworker comes to work with grease under their fingernails, and thinks that no Saturday is complete without opening the hood of the car, they will love the highly customizable nature of Arch Linux. Now, it must be noted that this is not the best choice for someone's first adventure in Linux, but for experienced DIY folks, Arch will mean true holiday happiness.
So, you have that one relative or friend who always wears black and lives in a house that doesn't look lived-in. The one who brings a copy of "Wallpaper" to the coffee shop where they have a single espresso in a plain china cup. You're giving that relative or friend Elementary OS. Elementary began as a set of applications and desktop settings for Ubuntu but has now become its own distribution that is often described with two words: "fast" and "beautiful."
Since Elementary is based on Ubuntu, it has access to many of the Ubuntu applications, though your relative or friend will want to carefully vet them to make sure they don't clash with the overall design of their carefully curated desktop. It's easy to poke fun at the aesthetes in our lives, but anyone who values lovely software would love to get Elementary as a gift.
We all know purists -- they like vanilla ice cream with no toppings and hamburgers that are meat, bread, and nothing else. If you have people like that on your gift list, they'll love Debian. Debian has been around for a long time and is notable for being a community-sustained project that contains nothing but free software and components. While Debian is a "pure" operating system, that doesn't mean that it lacks for applications. There are more than 43,000 applications in pre-compiled bundles available for the operating system. With that many options, it might be enough to convince the purists to try a smear of mustard on that very plain burger...
There are people who manage to bring the party with them wherever they go. If a cloud of fun seems to follow someone on your gift list, they need OpenMandriva Lx. When an operating system's description starts with, "A pinch of Community, a pinch of Passion, a pinch of Innovation, flavoured with Fun," you know where the community's priorities lie.
OpenMandriva Lx isn't only about the fun, of course. It's part of a complex family tree that goes back to Mandriva and includes a community-supported sibling, Mageia. That complicated history means that there are a lot of folks who can help someone get into the OpenMandriva party spirit and a lot of applications available to add to the fun.
There are people who manage to bring the party with them wherever they go. If a cloud of fun seems to follow someone on your gift list, they need OpenMandriva Lx. When an operating system's description starts with, "A pinch of Community, a pinch of Passion, a pinch of Innovation, flavoured with Fun," you know where the community's priorities lie.
OpenMandriva Lx isn't only about the fun, of course. It's part of a complex family tree that goes back to Mandriva and includes a community-supported sibling, Mageia. That complicated history means that there are a lot of folks who can help someone get into the OpenMandriva party spirit and a lot of applications available to add to the fun.
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