"Year of the Linux Desktop" Semifinals!
Round 2 results, and the next two matches to vote on!
Hello again, everyone, and welcome back to the Retro Millennial’s Year of the Linux Desktop Tournament! The quarterfinals wrapped up a little earlier today and it was quite a riveting round.
In match 9, Slackware had a solid showing early on but, in the end, fell short. Ubuntu prevailed with 68% of the vote which I’m cool with, but I can’t help but think Slackware would have been a cool system to run for the next year. I’m definitely going to add it to my list of systems to try in the future.
Match 10, on the other hand, was a stalemate. Fedora and Linux Mint went back and forth for three days, and even with a few last minute votes coming in, the two popular distros tied for an even 50/50 split. Now, I hadn’t considered the possibility of a draw so I had to figure out what to do, so I posted a flash, sudden death poll, over on Locals where Linux Mint was able to pull out a victory with 60%.
Match 11, however, was a blowout. In the first day, it appeared that NixOS was going to run away with it, but then the Debian fans showed up in force. With a staggering 84%, Debian is moving on to the semifinals.
Lastly, match 12 was another close one. As with the others, FreeBSD had a really solid showing early on. Arch closed the gap over the next day and took the lead in day 2, though lost some of that lead in the last 24 hours. In the end, however, Arch was able to hold on to a slim 56-44% lead to move on to the semifinals ensuring that this will — in fact — be the year of the Linux desktop.
The Semifinals
The quarterfinals had some really close matches, but I’m glad to see where we are with the semifinals. Can Linux Mint actually overtake Ubuntu? I mean, Ubuntu is a solid option to spend a year on, but if Mint goes all the way, it will be the first time I’ve used it as a daily driver in over a decade!
And what about match 14? I mean, talk about a clash of titans. Debian is a wonderful, stable, and steady distro that I could easily spend the next year getting my work done in. On the other end of the spectrum is Arch with its rolling packages. It’s been about three years since I’ve built an Arch system if memory serves. I didn’t run it for very long, but I enjoyed it while I did; and it’s nice to see at least one non-Debian-based distro make it this far. With all that said, let’s get to the vote!
Unfortunately, I feel like the interesting options have lost already. I'm very familiar with the four remaining distros, so I doubt I'll learn anything new about them. I've now switched to voting for which ones I like as opposed to which ones I was interested in seeing you try.
If you do this again, maybe you could stress that people should vote for distros they are unfamiliar with or would like to learn more about. Or maybe I'm the one looking at this the wrong way.