Cisco and Google Partner on New Hybrid Cloud Solution

      Cisco and Google Partner on New Hybrid Cloud Solution, Enabling Apps to Span On-Premises Environments and Google Cloud Platform

      Cisco and Google Cloud today announced a partnership to deliver a hybrid cloud solution that helps customers maximize their investments across cloud and on-premises environments. The companies will provide a unique and open hybrid cloud offering that enables applications and services to be deployed, managed and secured across on-premises environments and Google    

         Cloud Platform. The solution delivers cloud speed and scale, with enterprise-class security.The offering provides enterprises with a way to run, secure and monitor workloads, thus enabling them to optimize their existing investments, plan their cloud migration at their own pace and avoid vendor lock in. Companies can now develop new applications in the cloud or on premises, consistently using the same developer tools, run time, and production environment.

"Our partnership with Google gives our customers the very best cloud has to offer— agility and scale, coupled with enterprise-class security and support," said Chuck Robbins, chief executive officer, Cisco. "We share a common vision of a hybrid cloud world that delivers the speed of innovation in an open and secure environment to bring the right solutions to our customers."

"This joint solution from Google and Cisco facilitates an easy and incremental approach to tapping the benefits of the Cloud. This is what we hear customers asking for," said Diane Greene, CEO, Google Cloud.

The joint Cisco and Google Cloud hybrid solution helps developers leverage managed Kubernetes, GCP Service Catalog, Cisco networking and security, and Istio authentication and service mesh monitoring. Enterprise app developers can securely access cloud APIs, and cloud developers can securely access enterprise APIs and on-premises resources   

Difference Between GIMP and Photoshop 

GIMP vs Photoshop            

GIMP and Photoshop are both programs that are meant to open and edit images. The major difference between these two is that Photoshop is proprietary and would cost a lot of money to purchase while GIMP is open source software and is therefore free for anyone to download and use.

GIMP originally stands for General Image Manipulation Program and started as a project for a couple of students in college. It started to gain in popularity after it was added to the GNU list and a community formed around it that improves and troubleshoot problems. At this point the name was also changed from General to GNU but the acronym remained unchanged.

Despite the eager community supporting GIMP, it is still not as advanced as Photoshop. Even if GIMP is equipped with a lot of professional tools, there are features that are essential to professional level editing absent in GIMP like non-destructive editing. Most professional photographers and graphic artists use Photoshop due to the ease of use and its very powerful tools. Not even the high price of the Adobe Suite of imaging programs deterred people who needed professional quality images from using Photoshop.

The problem with Photoshop is that it only supports two operating systems, Windows and Mac OS. Professional photographers are restricted to these two unless they want substandard images. Being a part of the GNU, the source code of GIMP is easily acquirable and compiled for multiple operating systems. There is a version of GIMP for every operating system available, making it a good choice when you cannot change your operating system to the two that Photoshop supports.

     GIMP is best for photography hobbyists who just want to improve the quality of their photos without spending any money on the software. It is also suitable for amateurs who may want to learn the basics and the concepts of how to manipulate the images before turning pro and acquiring the associated tools.

1. Photoshop is proprietary while GIMP is open source
2. Professional photographers prefer Photoshop over GIMP
3. GIMP is best for hobbyists or amateurs as a free alternative to Photoshop or as a learning tool before buying the expensive Adobe Imaging Suite
4. The Photoshop user interface is made up of a single window that contains child windows while the GIMP UI is composed of multiple windows
5. Photoshop is only available on Mac and Windows while GIMP versions are available for Mac, Windows, Linux, and UNIX

What is CAPTCHA and How it works?

What is CAPTCHA and How it  works?

CAPTCHA stands for Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart.  It’s a commonly-used technology that checks to see if online users are, in fact, humans or if they are  software robots  (commonly referred to simply as “bots”) seeking to wreak havoc.  CAPTCHA makes this distinction by relying on specific traits that only humans possess.  

WHAT DOES CAPTCHA DO?

CAPTCHA is widely used throughout the web as a means to protect users from bots, spam and  DOS  (denial of service) attacks.  Unfortunately, there are people out there who want to harm user websites and systems for all kinds of reasons. Perhaps it’s a means to stave off competition or unwelcome advertising, or perhaps it’s simply to express destructive behavior.  Whatever the reason may be, CAPTCHA is a means to counteract these attacks, and trust us when we tell you that this is one technology that is truly doing us all a favor.   

The DOS attack we mentioned is arguably the most basic example of what CAPTCHA technologies work to fend off.  These attacks are specifically designed to make resources entirely unavailable. Those staging these attacks, send out large numbers of requests to a given server, overwhelming it, and therefore making it incapable of returning results.  It essentially blocks your website.  Now, the fundamental concept that you need to understand here, though, is that actual humans are not sending out these attacks, as it would simply be too time-consuming to send out that sort of large number of requests at one time.  Computers are doing all of the work in this scenario by sending out hundreds of requests every single second.  It is this unusual behavior that CAPTCHA helps to identify and block. 

AWS Offers Aurora Cloud DB

AWS Offers Aurora Cloud DB Service Compatible With PostgreSQL

Amazon Web Services on Tuesday announced the general availability ofAmazon Aurora with PostgreSQL compatibility.

The service is now fully compatible with both MySQL and PostgreSQL, the company said.
AWS also announced that customers migrating to Amazon Aurora from another database can use the AWS Database Migration Service free of charge for the next six months.
Amazon Aurora is a cloud-optimized relational database that combines the speed and availability of high-end commercial databases with the simplicity and cost-effectiveness of open source databases.
Customers who use PostgreSQL databases can get up to several times better performance with scalability, durability, availability and security that is as good as or better than commercial databases at one-tenth the cost.
The added compatibility will give a sizable boost to Amazon's competitive position among cloud database service providers, said Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT.
"It puts AWS onto an equal footing with competitors," he told LinuxInsider.
IBM Cloud announced support for PostgreSQL and other open source databases on the IBM Power Systems program in June, King said, and Microsoft Azure announced an Azure dababase for PostgreSQL service in May.
"If its new service is a success, AWS could pick up new customers and entice existing clients to experiment with PostgreSQL migrations. Only time will tell," he added.

Power and Price

Aurora delivers the performance and availability of high-end commercial databases at one-tenth the cost, according to Amazon. Previously, customers using commercial databases have had to choose between performance and price when evaluating database solutions.
Commercial alternatives provide high performance but are expensive, complex to manage, have high lock-in and restrictive licensing terms, the company said. Open source databases such as PostgreSQL and MySQL require less capital expense -- but until now did not deliver the performance or availability of commercial databases.
"When we made Amazon Aurora available in 2015, for the first time, customers had a cost-effective and high-performance alternative to commercial databases like Oracle and SQL Server," said Raju Gulabani, vice president for databases, analytics and machine learning at AWS. "This is a big part of why Amazon Aurora is the fastest-growing service in the history of AWS."
The support for PostgreSQL provides users with a winning combination, said Andy Ellicott, chief marketing officer atCrate.io.
PostgreSQL is one of the most widely used and supported databases in the world, he told LinuxInsider.
"With this enhancement to Aurora, AWS has just opened the on-ramp for a flood of new cloud applications, especially for people struggling to boost performance or uptime of their on-premises PostgreSQL databases," Ellicott said.

What It Does

Amazon Aurora offers both the performance and availability of high-grade commercial databases at a cost more commonly associated with open source. Aurora provides support for PostgreSQL, complex SQL and NoSQL. It also offers JSON support and broad application language features.
Aurora's improved speed performance, compared to standard MySQL and PostgreSQL, comes from Amazon's use of a variety of software and hardware techniques to ensure the database is able to leverage available compute, memory and networking resources fully. Amazon Aurora storage automatically scales -- growing and rebalancing Input and Output across the fleet to provide consistent performance.
Aurora automatically replicates data across multiple availability zones and continuously backs up data to Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3).
It is designed to offer greater than 99.99 percent availability and to detect and recover from most database failures automatically, in less than 30 seconds, without crashing or needing to rebuild database caches.
Amazon Aurora continually monitors instance health; if there is a failure, it will failover to a read replica automatically, without loss of data.

Peak Performance

The Aurora service does not require upfront costs or commitments. Customers pay an hourly charge for each Amazon Aurora database instance they use. Users can scale storage capacity automatically, with no downtime or performance degradation.
Many consider PostgreSQL to be a more powerful database than MySQL and other open source database solutions, Pund-IT's King said.
"The new service will leverage AWS' common value prop of power [with] flexible service delivery that costs considerably less than implementing and supporting on-premises DB solutions," he added.
More than 1,000 Aurora service customers participated in a product preview that battle-tested PostgreSQL compatibility for Amazon Aurora, running millions of hours against their real-world application workloads, Amazon pointed out.
Participating companies included Verizon, Capital One, FINRA, Fannie Mae, C3 IOT, Urban Airship, FantasyDraft, BMC, Blackboard and Nielsen.

Acquiring Customers

PostgreSQL includes features similar to Oracle's DB, including multiversioning, noted King.
That is one of the reasons that when AWS announced its intention to support PostgreSQL last November, the company joked semi-seriously about going after Oracle's enterprise clients, he recalled.
"It is no surprise that AWS is positioning the new service as a worthy alternative to proprietary databases like Oracle and SQL Server," King said, "but it is unclear to me how many serious takers there will be."
Amazon expects an active influx of waiting new customers. The growth of Amazon Aurora's MySQL-compatible edition has far exceeded the company's expectations, said Amazon's Gulabani.
"Many of our enterprise customers anxious to move on from their old-world database providers have been waiting for Amazon Aurora's PostgreSQL-compatible edition to launch into general availability," he said. "We're excited to help these customers take another step toward database freedom."

Growth Opportunity

A growing group of IT managers has opted for MySQL to avoid the problems of working with a lock-in vendor like Oracle, observed Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group.
Oracle did a pretty good job of killing MySQL after buying Sun Microsystems, he told LinuxInsider, but the demand for a low-cost, high-quality alternative remained.
Now Amazon is going after that opportunity, Enderle said, noting that it has a brand that companies trust, and it should be able to build an advocacy base that eventually will allow it to take on Oracle aggressively.
All they need to do is "figure out an acceptable migration strategy from Oracle, or just go after those IT shops that have been denied MySQL support," Enderle said.
Amazon has the resources to create a viable and very powerful Oracle alternative, he emphasized.
On paper this makes Amazon a player in the relational database space. Of course, it still has to execute, Enderle said, but "betting against Amazon execution has not been a good bet of late."

What is own cloud ownCloud ?

Access, Sync and Share Your Data, Under Your Control!

ownCloud is a self-hosted file sync and share server. It provides access to your data through a web interface, sync clients or WebDAV while providing a platform to view, sync and share across devices easily — all under your control. ownCloud’s open architecture is extensible via a simple but powerful API for applications and plugins and it works with any storage.

Oracle Open Stack Cloud

Why Oracle OpenStack ?

• Fully integrated enterprise OpenStack cloud solutions with complete, end-to-end support from a single vendor
• Simplified deployment leveraging Docker packages and Linux Containers
• Provides end-to-end support from Oracle OpenStack platform to base OS, guest OS, and Oracle workloads—from a single vendor
• Delivers built-in high availability support with MySQL Cluster to ensure continuity and resiliency of Oracle OpenStack services
• Choice of private and/or hybrid cloud with enterprise-class components
• Supports OpenStack Mitaka

Mobile Application Developer on Linux

5 Essential Skills for Becoming a Mobile Application Developer on Linux

As more and more people rely on their cellphones for conducting all kinds of business, mobile app development will only continue to increase in importance. Although they share quite a few similarities with desktop applications, mobile apps present their own set of challenges and particularities. Therefore, a programmer that wishes to find gainful employment in the current market will need to harness and develop the skills that are in-demand at the present time. When it comes to mobile app development on Linux-based platforms, these skills include:

1. Java

Far and away the most commonly used programming language when it comes to mobile applications, Java is mainly used to build native Android programs. There are numerous different frameworks, but learning how to work with them invariably starts with having a good understanding of Java in general. What's more, Java is known for its stability and security, two features that make it an especially attractive proposition in the enterprise sector.

2. Android SDK

As the most popular Linux-based platform, Android rivals iOS when it comes to the sheer breadth and diversity of its apps. In order to get in on the game, you'll need to learn your way around Android SDK. Among other things, this software development kit includes sample projects, development tools and the required libraries to get you started on building Android applications from scratch.

3. Titanium SDK

If you already have a good understanding of Java and HTML, Titanium will be a great tool for furthering your mobile development goals. It can help you build native cross-platform apps using Javascript that are easy to code and can run on a vast array of devices. What's more, Appcelerator licenses Titanium for free under the Apache 2 license for both personal and commercial use in order to encourage developers to create things without worrying about the cost.

4. Apache Cordova

Formerly known as PhoneGap, Apache Cordova is a mobile application development framework that enables developers to build apps using CSS3, HTML5 and Javascript instead of relying on platform-specific APIs. This results in hybrid applications, which are neither truly native nor web-based. Installing Cordova on Linux is a fairly straightforward process, with additional tools like Apache Ant only serving to increase the functionality of the framework.

5. Node.js

Node.js is an open-source Javascript runtime environment that is widely popular for developing web applications. However, it has proven its use in the mobile world through its employment of Google's V8 JavaScript engine, which is Android-compatible. If properly utilized, Node allows programmers to use the same platform for developing both server and mobile apps, thereby greatly speeding up development times in the process.

That concludes our quick rundown of the top skills that any aspiring mobile app developer for Linux should be familiar with. Keep in mind that the aforementioned technologies are just a starter pack, and that there are plenty of other skills that will need to be honed as you progress in your career. After all, in programming as in life, education never really stops, and you should always seek to better yourself at every step of the way.

Whats new in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.4 ?

  

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.4  its latest features:

Security

• Updated audit capabilities to help simplify how administrators filter the events logged by the audit system, gather more information from critical events, and interpret large numbers of records.
• USB Guard, which is a Linux software framework that protects your servers from rogue USB devices, is integrated into RHEL.
• Enhanced container security functionality, with full support for using SELinux with OverlayFS to secure the underlying file system and the ability to use docker and use namespaces together for fine-grained access control.
• Red Hat will no longer use by default deprecated insecure OpenSSH algorithms and protocols such as arcfour, SHA-1-based key exchange algorithms, and blowfish-cbc

Performance

Today's business applications require more bandwidth and increased storage, placing a performance strain on traditional operating systems and hardware. RHEL 7.4's new features will improve both networking and storage performance. It's new features include:

• Support for NVMe Over Fabric helps provide customers with increased flexibility and reduced overhead when accessing high-performance Non-Volatile Memory (NVMe)storage devices on both Ethernet or Infiniband fabric infrastructures. NVMe is a communications interface/protocol developed specially for low-latency Solid-State Drives (SSD)s. By being able to handle up to 65,536 data transfer queues, it's great for speeding servers up that deal with multiple simultaneous disk I/O requests.
• General public cloud enhancements by decreasing boot times to better enable mission-critical applications to start sooner. It also now supports Amazon Web Services (AWS)'s Elastic Network Adapter (ENA) to enable new network capabilities.

Containers

RHEL 7.4 includes the latest version of RHEL Atomic Host. This is a purpose-built container host for secure and reliable containerized applications across hybrid clouds. Its new features include:

• Improved security without sacrificing performance, thanks to integrated support for SELinux and OverlayFS, and full support for the overlay2 storage graph driver.
• Full support for package layering with rpm-ostree, providing a means of adding packages like monitoring agents and drivers to the host operating system.
• LiveFS is introduced as a technology preview, which enables users to install security updates and layer packages without a reboot.

DevOps

With data center footprints that span from bare-metal to the cloud, controlling IT environments grows ever more complex. Besides the existing Red Hat Satellite and Ansible Tower, the new RHEL introduces RHEL System Roles as a technology preview. This DevOps tool provides a common management interface across all major RHEL versions. This enables sysadmins to use Ansible automation across large, heterogeneous RHEL deployments.

Multiple architecture support

Red Hat remains committed to supporting data center infrastructure customer choice. RHEL 7.4 does this by supporting multiple architectures. These include IBM Power, IBM System z, and 64-bit ARM (as a Development Preview). For the IBM Power Little Endian architecture, this release enables support for the High Availability and Resilient Storage add-ons and the Open Container Initiative (OCI)'s new container runtime and image format.

Put it all together and you have a Linux you can use on physical servers, in and with containers, and on the cloud. Once more, in RHEL 7.4 Red Hat has an outstanding Linux for corporate users.

Intel Pineview Atom based Motherboards
Complete Overview

low cost meets low power consumption and small form factor      

    The market for low power draw (below 20 Watts), passively cooled, small form factor motherboards was until recently dominated by rather expensive VIA boards and to a smaller extent AMD (with the Geode). Even last years' first generation Intel Atom cpu did not fit into this category, as first generation Intel Atom motherboards (with the commonly used power-hungry Intel 945GC chipset or even with the Nvidia ION) typically consumed 20-35 Watts and therefore usually needed a fan on the chipset (see our detailed TDP comparison).

The new Intel 'Pineview' Atom cpu combined with the new Intel NM10 Express (formerly Tiger Point) single-chip-chipset on the other hand, makes Atom based motherboards that only draw 10-20 Watts a reality, which means they can be passively cooled and used for purposes where they need to be running 24/7, while minimizing the impact on the electricity bill.

Apart from industrial uses, these new Intel 'Pineview' Atom motherboards are ideal in combination with Linux to make small, low power consumption, 24/7 home mail or web servers, BT-clients, file servers (see our example build), home surveillance appliances, routers, firewalls or even small PCs for web browsing and email.

So far Intel has released ten 'Pineview' Atom chips, all are 64-bit capable and incorporate an Intel GMA 3150 graphics processor (GPU):

Model	Cores	Threads	Cache	Speed	RAM type	EIST	CPU TDP	Total TDP
Atom N450	1	2	512 KB	1.66 GHz	DDR2	yes	5.5 Watts	7 Watts
Atom N455	1	2	512 KB	1.66 GHz	DDR2 / DDR3	yes	5.5 Watts	7 Watts
Atom N470	1	2	512 KB	1.83 GHz	DDR2	yes	6.5 Watts	8 Watts
Atom N475	1	2	512 KB	1.83 GHz	DDR2 / DDR3	yes	6.5 Watts	8 Watts
Atom N550	2	4	1 MB	1.5 GHz	DDR3	yes	8.5 Watts	10 Watts
Atom N570	2	4	1 MB	1.66 GHz	DDR3	yes	8.5 Watts	10 Watts
Atom D410	1	2	512 KB	1.66 GHz	DDR2	no	10 Watts	12 Watts
Atom D425	1	2	512 KB	1.80 GHz	DDR2 / DDR3	no	10 Watts	12 Watts
Atom D510	2	4	1 MB	1.66 GHz	DDR2	no	13 Watts	15 Watts
Atom D525	2	4	1 MB	1.80 GHz	DDR2 / DDR3	no	13 Watts	15 Watts

Total TDP is the TDP (thermal design power) of the Intel Atom cpu and the Intel NM10 Express southbridge (the single-chip-chipset of the Intel Pine Trail platform) combined.

EIST stands for 'Enhanched Intel Speedstep Technology', a technique that adapts the clock speed to the cpu load to reduce power consumption. Only the N-series (netbook) Atom cpus have EIST.

The N-series Atom cpus (N450, N455, N470, N475, N550 and N570) are targeted at netbooks (but there are some motherboards using them anyway), while the D-series Atom cpus (D410, D425, D510 and D525) are meant to be used on mini-ITX motherboards or in nettops or other mini PCs.

The newer N455, N475, D425 and D525 Intel Atoms support both DDR2 and DDR3 RAM, enabling PC manufacturers to choose which RAM technology to support on their mainboards, while the newest Atoms (N550 and N570) only support DDR3 reflecting the fact that DDR2 memory is being phased out.

Red Hat Vs SAP Team Integration of RHEL

Red Hat, SAP Team on New Integrated Enterprise Linux Platform

Red Hat on Tuesday announced the launch of Red Hat Enterprise Linux for SAP Solutions, a new platform that combines two existing systems for analytics and data management into a single offering.

The new platform combines the existing Red Hat Enterprise Linux for SAP Applications and Red Hat Enterprise Linux for SAP HANA into a single, consolidated platform.

Complex Challenges

"There is no single technology stack to solve every enterprise challenge, and big data analytics is no different," said Jim Totten, vice president and general manager of the Platforms Business Unit at Red Hat. "Increasingly we are seeing IT organizations use multiple SAP solutions to tackle the complex challenges of their evolving markets."
Built upon the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 operating system, the platform adds a few new wrinkles, including Red Hat Insights, which offers proactive analytics and real-time intelligence. It allows customers to build and deploy cloud-based systems while providing warnings about potential technical problems and security threats.
Other technologies included in the new platform include Red Hat's High Availability Add on, which isolates unresponsive applications; the Smart Management Add-0n, which helps to provision and patch large deployments of the software; and Update Service, which provides four years of extended support, including critical security updates and bug fixes.
The new platform is available through the Red Hat Customer Portal.

High Anticipation

Big data has been fueling innovation, said Mark Dendinger, CEO of 3V Solutions, a reseller of Red Hat software, but "large enterprises typically want to deploy multiple or layered technologies to address their specific data analysis and management needs."
The new Red Hat platform definitely will "enhance the customer experience," Dendinger told LinuxInsider.
The new platform marks the latest collaboration in a long relationship between SAP and Red Hat, which have worked as partners in the open source space for about 17 years, noted Lis Strenger, Red Hat product marketing manager, digital transformation.
"Both companies are committed to open source initiatives," she told LinuxInsider. Red Hat's open source OS, virtualization and Java middleware technologies provide a leading platform upon which to run SAP applications.
Customers of the two companies have begun to test the new platform, which will move into production shortly, Strenger said.
Customers migrating to SAP S/4HANA have been anticipating this new integrated platform, she added, as it "provides consistent infrastructure for both transactional and analytical workloads."

Growing Demand

The new platform demonstrates the ''growing acceptance of open source alternatives," said Jeffrey Kaplan, managing director at ThinkStrategies.
Open source "can enhance and extend the capabilities of traditional enterprise applications and tools, like those provided by SAP," he told LinuxInsider.
The announcement from Red Hat and SAP came just one day after Red Hat announced an agreement with Microsoft to offer Microsoft SQL Server 2017 on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Linux Comes to Windows

Run multiple Linux distributions in Windows 10.

     Microsoft has announced that WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux, also known as Bash on Windows, is now out of beta. With Windows 10 Fall Creator update, every Windows user will be able to use the feature. However, WSL is not enabled by default. User have to enable it from the Settings turn Windows features on or off feature.

Microsoft will offer supported Linux distributions from the Windows Store, so there is no need to install them manually. Some of the supported distros include openSUSE, SUSE Linux Enterprise, and Ubuntu. Fedora is expected to arrive soon. Microsoft will offer official support for these distributions in partnership with the respective distribution.

Customers can now run multiple Linux distributions, which means they can use commands, utilities, and tools specific to different distributions.

Although WSL is still in the works, it now supports USB mounts that gives developers access to USB devices from Linux.

Microsoft is also bringing WSL to Windows Server and Azure Cloud. “Using WSL, Windows Server administrators, devops engineers, developers, etc., will be able to run their favorite Linux tools, apps, and scripts, alongside their favorite Windows admin tools. This will make it easier than ever before to automate, control, manage, and deploy an ever broader portfolio of technologies & tools atop Windows Server,” wrote Microsoft Program Manager Rich Turner in a company blog.

WSL is intended for developers who need native Linux tools to run and manage their Linux systems on Azure and other clouds; officially, it’s not intended for desktop users.

Best Suitable Linux Distribution for System admins

Best distro for sysadmins : Parrot Linux

parrotsec_a.jpg

Parrot Linux is based on Debian and offers nearly every penetration testing tool you could possibly want.

Used with permission

Administrators are tasked with so much on a daily basis. Without a solid toolkit, that job becomes incredibly challenging. For that, there are a host of Linux distributions ready to serve. I believe the one distribution that will find a significant rise in popularity for the coming year will be Parrot Linux. This particular distribution is based on Debian and offers nearly every penetration testing tool you could possibly want. You will also find tools for cryptography, cloud, anonymity, digital forensics, programming, and even productivity. All of these tools (and there are many) are coupled with an already rock-solid foundation to create a Linux distribution perfect for the security and network administrator

How to Choose Desktop Suitable Linux versions and Distributions ?

                                  

      There are hundreds of Linux distributions and according to some people there are too many. I don't subscribe to this theory.

For people new to Linux however it is possibly tricky to know which Linux distro is best for them.

  This Article goes through the top Linux distros as listed at Distrowatch.com and gives a short description of each one as well as a table showing how easy they are to install, who they are for, level of expertise required and the desktop environment that they use.

Linux Mint

Linux Mint provides a modern take on what many people have become accustomed to over the years. If you have ever used Windows XP, VIsta or Windows 7 then you will appreciate that there is a panel at the bottom, a menu, a series of quick launch icons and a system tray.

It doesn't matter which desktop environment you end up deciding on (of which Linux Mint provides many) they are all designed to look and feel the same way.

It is easy to install, comes with all the applications you need for general home computing and provides straight forward computing for the masses.

Level Of Expertise Required	Low
Desktop Environment	Cinnamon, MATE, XFCE, KDE
Purpose	General Desktop Operating System
Download Link	https://www.linuxmint.com/download.php
Based On	Ubuntu, Debian Debian Debian is one of the oldest Linux distributions and is the base for many of the other distributions that exist including Ubuntu and Linux Mint. It is a community distribution and only ships with free software and free drivers. The Debian repositories have thousands of applications and there are versions available for a large number of hardware devices. It isn't the easiest to install and there are various steps you need to go through post installation to get all of your hardware working. Level Of Expertise Required Medium Desktop Environment GNOME, KDE, XFCE. LXDE (+ others) Purpose Community distribution which can be used as a server, general desktop operating system, base for other distribution. Truly multipurpose Download Link https://www.debian.org/distrib/ Based On N/A Ubuntu Ubuntu is a modern desktop operating system designed for the masses and is meant to be every bit as easy to use as Windows or OSX. With full hardware integration and a complete set of applications, most beginners see this as the first step onto the Linux ladder.  If you want to try something other than Windows and you are worried about Linux relying too hard on the command line try Ubuntu because you won't need the terminal window at all. Easy to install and easy to use with great support. Level Of Expertise Required Low Desktop Environment Unity Purpose General desktop operating system Download Link http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop Based On Debian Manjaro Manjaro provides an easier method to install and use an Arch based distribution. Arch is a forward thinking rolling distribution which many expert users swear by. Unfortunately, Arch is somewhat less forgiving on new users and a level of expertise and a willingness to learn and read is required to get up and running. Manjaro bridges the gap by providing an operating system that intermediate users can use to get a taste of Arch without the hassle. Fairly lightweight which means it will work well on older hardware and machines with low resources. Level Of Expertise Required Medium Desktop Environment Cinnamon, Enlightenment, XFCE, GNOME (+ others) Purpose General Desktop Operating System Download Link http://sourceforge.net/projects/manjarolinux/ Based On Arch openSUSE A great alternative to Ubuntu and other Debian based Linux distributions. openSUSE provides a stable environment for home users with a decent set of applications and a decent level of support. Installation can be a bit tricky for new or inexperienced computer users but once set up there is a decent set of documentation. Not quite as straight forward as Mint or Ubuntu. Level Of Expertise Required Low / Medium Desktop Environment GNOME, KDE (+ others) Purpose General desktop operating system  Download Link https://software.opensuse.org/distributions/testing?locale=en Based On N/A Fedora Fedora is a community distribution based on Red Hat. Designed to be cutting edge, Fedora always comes with up to date software and drivers and was one of the first distributions to introduce both Wayland and SystemD. Straight forward to install and comes with a good range of software. Can be temperamental due to the fact that it is so cutting edge and not all packages are stable. Level Of Expertise Required Low / Medium Desktop Environment GNOME, KDE (+ others) Purpose General desktop operating system, experiments with new concepts Download Link https://getfedora.org/en/workstation/download/ Based On Red Hat Zorin OS Zorin is based on Ubuntu and has been designed to look and feel like other operating systems such as Windows 7 and OSX. (The user chooses the theme to make it look like one thing or another). It has a complete set of desktop applications such as office suite, graphics application, audio player, video player etc. Zorin also has a lot of visual effects. Level Of Expertise Required Low Desktop Environment GNOME, LXDE Purpose General Purpose Desktop Operating system designed to make users of other operating systems feel at home. Includes a lite version for older hardware Download Link https://zorinos.com/download/ Based On Ubuntu Elementary It is hard to believe that Elementary is so low in the rankings at the moment. Designed to be lightweight yet easy to install and use with the emphasis on a clean and elegant user interface. It is based on Ubuntu and so provides access to a large repository of applications. Level Of Expertise Required Low Desktop Environment Pantheon Purpose Lightweight yet elegant desktop operating system Download Link https://elementary.io/ Based On Ubuntu Deepin Deepin heralds from China and is based on Debian. It has its own desktop environment based on QT5 and includes its own software manager, audio player, and other tools. Level Of Expertise Required Low / Medium Desktop Environment Deepin (based on QT5) Purpose General desktop operating system Download Link http://www.deepin.org/en Based On Debian CentOS CentOS is another community distribution based on Red Hat but unlike Fedora it is more mainstream and built for the same sort of audience as openSUSE. It uses the same installer as Fedora and so it is straight forward to install and there is a decent selection of applications. Level Of Expertise Required Low / Medium Desktop Environment GNOME, KDE (+ others) Purpose General desktop operating system Download Link https://www.centos.org/download/ Based On Red Hat Antergos Antergos like Manjaro aims to provide an operating system that anybody can use whilst also providing access to Arch Linux. Not quite as polished as Manjaro but it offers the choice of multiple desktop environments and is fairly easy to use. The way you choose the desktop environment is during the installation stage and through the installer, you can choose all manner of features such as the applications you wish to install such as LibreOffice. Generally speaking a very good distribution but not so easy to dual boot. Level Of Expertise Required Low / Medium Desktop Environment GNOME, KDE (+ others) Purpose General desktop operating system Download Link https://www.mageia.org/en/downloads/ Based On N/A Arch As mentioned previously Arch is a distribution that intermediate and expert Linux users swear by. It provides up to date software and drivers but requires more maintenance than other distributions and it requires decent knowledge and a willingness to read the manual. Level Of Expertise Required Medium High Desktop Environment Cinnamon, GNOME, KDE (+ others) Purpose Multipurpose desktop operating system Download Link https://www.archlinux.org/download/ Based On N/A PCLinuxOS It is unbelievable that this distribution is so low in the rankings. As easy to install and use as Ubuntu or Mint and has a great set of repositories and a good community. This would be my true alternative to using Ubuntu or Mint. What is more is that it is a rolling distribution meaning that once it is installed you never need to upgrade as it is always up to date. Level Of Expertise Required Low Desktop Environment KDE, GNOME, LXDE, MATE Purpose General purpose desktop operating system Download Link http://www.pclinuxos.com/get-pclinuxos/ Based On N/A Solus Solus is a fairly new distribution which focuses on providing quality over quantity. Whilst this makes a great distribution on the surface certain key applications aren't available. As the distribution evolves it could become a major player but for now I would doubt the average person could use it as their only operating system Level Of Expertise Required Medium Desktop Environment Budgie Purpose General purpose desktop operating system focusing on quality Download Link https://solus-project.com/ Based On N/A Linux Lite Linux Lite is another Ubuntu based operating system designed to be lightweight. It is easy to install and comes with a full suite of applications. It isn't an official Ubuntu spin off but it has been going for a number of years now and it is definitely worth checking out. As it is based on Ubuntu it is easy to install and use. Level Of Expertise Required Low Desktop Environment XFCE Purpose Lightweight Desktop Operating System Download Link https://www.linuxliteos.com/download.php Based On Ubuntu Mageia Mageia rose from the flames of the Mandriva project when it briefly ceased to exist. A general purpose distribution similar to openSUSE and Fedora with a good range of software and a simple to use installer. There are a few quirks but nothing insurmountable. Level Of Expertise Required Low / Medium Desktop Environment GNOME, KDE (+ others) Purpose General desktop operating system, experiments with new concepts Download Link https://www.mageia.org/en/downloads/ Based On N/A Ubuntu MATE Before Ubuntu started using the Unity desktop it utilized the GNOME 2 desktop which was a popular desktop environment which was both lightweight and customizable. The MATE desktop environment provides a desktop very similar to the old GNOME 2 desktop although it utilizes GNOME 3. What you end up with is all the goodness of Ubuntu with a good performance and a highly customizable desktop environment. Level Of Expertise Required Low Desktop Environment MATE Purpose General Desktop Operating System, will work well on low powered computers Download Link https://ubuntu-mate.org/vivid/ Based On Ubuntu LXLE LXLE is basically Lubuntu on steroids. Lubuntu is a lightweight version of the Ubuntu distribution utilizing the LXDE desktop. LXLE is a respin of Lubuntu with a more complete set of applications and tools included. The fact that LXLE is more popular than Lubuntu shows that the extras added do provide good value. Easy to install and great for older computers and netbooks. Level Of Expertise Required Low Desktop Environment LXDE Purpose General Desktop Operating System for machines with low resources Download Link http://www.lxle.net/download/ Based On Lubuntu Ubuntu and Linux Mint Suitable for: Beginner to Advanced/Server Ubuntu is currently the most popular of the Linux Distributions. It is built on a Debian core, but has a more regular release cycle, is more polished, is easy to use and has major financial backing. It is a completely free distro, therefore copyrighted materials such as DVD playing software do not come as standard with Ubuntu, you must download and install it separately, but can be done easily. If you don’t like the look and feel of the latest Ubuntu desktop (called Unity), Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu, is made for beginners and still offers a GNOME or KDE version. Red Hat/CentOS/Fedora Suitable for: Beginner to Advanced/Server Used to be very popular, easy to use, good installer. Has some annoying quirks, RPM software packaging can suffer from dependency problems, even with YUM system. RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) is the non-free Enterprise version offering of this distribution, it comes with full telephone based support and is backed by rigorous testing. CentOS is the free version which is derived from RHEL but usually trails behind it and of course does not come with enterprise support, then there is Fedora Core. Fedora is the bleeding-edge fork of Red Hat which has all the latest bells and whistles but as it is bleeding-edge, it can also suffer from less stability than their enterprise-grade counterparts. SuSE Linux Suitable for: Beginner to Advanced SuSE was once an independent German Linux distribution, which later was purchased by Novell, who later sold it to VMWare. It’s now an excellent all-rounder which is geared up for the Enterprise. good manuals & docs, masses of great software, brilliant support. Enterprise version great for corporate use with business support and has partnered with companies such as SAP (and of course VMWare). Software Installer still relies on RPM system from RedHat which can suffer from dependency problems however this is mainly a thing of the past. Slackware and Arch Linux Suitable for: Advanced to Server Users Slackware was probably the first linux distribution. Targeted at geeks who like to tweak or for the server market looking to get every little ounce of server performance. Quite hard to install and use, Uses .tar.gz packages rather than more popular .deb or .rpm systems. If you fall into the more advanced camp, but don’t like the sound of compiling everything, perhaps Arch is for you, as it still offers similar levels of customisation as Slackware. Debian Suitable for: Intermediate to Advanced Users Very established Linux distro. DEB packages combined with apt-get system solve the tedium of the RPM software packaging in Redhat/Suse/Mandriva. Traditionally known for being further behind than some other distros, but rock solid. Is now the basis for many modern, easier to use distributions such as Ubuntu and Linux Mint. Note: If a distribution is at release 10 (ie: Slackware), but another distribution is only at 4.1 (ie: Debian), this does not indicate that Debian is an old version of Linux. The release numbers are only an indicator of how many releases that particular vendor has made. For example it is quite likely that Debian 4.1 and Slackware 10 share the same major kernel version and many similar software titles.