Ceci est une ancienne révision du document !
What turns you away from a distro? And what turns you to a distro?
A desktop environment which is ugly and does not match the way I work. Boot speed, configurability.
Repositories with not much that I want in them, and no repo for that distro (e.g OpenSUSE) Everything working out of the box
No or poor drivers for my hardware; changing default app content; over-ambitious desktop GUI Quick boot; non-alignment to a particular problem (e.g., to music production); constant improvement, particularly in the kernel
Lack of application updates and delayed security fixes. Strong leadership team and enthusiastic community support.
Many default apps for the same purpose being installed and having strange settings Room for customization and not many required reboots
Unwanted and silly changes like Unity Good language support, possibility to work fast and effective, easy to use
Easy to install and no futzing with drivers - audio, video, printer, wacom. It should fully work together. Recent upgrade went through three distros to find one that just worked. It works perfectly after install. No wandering through forums to get audio to work; no tracing obscure issues in video, no desktop GUI issues. IT JUST WORKS. Am I there yet? Nope. Closer than on some other distros.
When the upgrade changes, or removes all the things I liked in the first place When it has all the apps that I want - without forcing anything I don’t want, on me
Hardware drivers, I tried to install Debian on my laptop and was unable to use it because of lacking wifi driver, Kubuntu worked fine User friendly, configurable, good community, it just works
Gnome 2 was fine and I think Gnome 3 should be OK. Everything on my screen is much too big. I don’t like launching/switching buttons like in Windows 7 and Unity. I don’t like having to type in the name of an application in a search field. I don’t like configuring compiz-fusion, which is totally incomprehensible. I don’t like the big icons all over my desktop. Matureness and features are lacking. I like thin tool bars with small buttons. I like distinctive buttons that tell me which applications are open. I like to be able to chose easily what will be on my toolbar. I like the menu of applications to be organized by category. I like to be able to drag-and-drop between posts in Thunderbird – not possible in Unity. I like my iPod to be recognized by GTKpod when I plug it in. I like the weather to be in French at the top of the control panel, even though I live in Quebec. I like to be able to erase the history of recently opened applications. I’m a pretty knowledgeable user and I don’t mind getting my hands dirty, but there’s a minimum that a distribution should allow you to do easily. I’m using Mint LMDE while waiting for Gnome 3 and Gnome shell.