My primary professional OS progression went something like:
Slackware -> Debian -> Ubuntu -> OS X.
As with the author, I'm pretty sure I'm done with OS X. If I want to go back to Linux, what is the best path? Mint? Back to Ubuntu? Something new?
Slackware -> Debian -> Ubuntu -> OS X.
As with the author, I'm pretty sure I'm done with OS X. If I want to go back to Linux, what is the best path? Mint? Back to Ubuntu? Something new?
You might be sacrificing running the bleeding edge of that particular environment, but instead you get kept more up to date on basically everything else (not that the others lag that much, but you're probably waiting a little longer for the next point release at the very least).
If you're willing to put up with a little fiddling around, a tiling window manager like XMonad is really worth the learning curve. I've used it exclusively for work for the past year and it's been a revelation.
I guess if needed lots of packages on the fly, or changed machines every few months it would be different. But it's once in a great while... then solid and stable for a long time.
To be frank, I would rather build packages from source. It's not I'm suspicious, but I run into plenty of problems with versions etc. using package tools, and it's really not that much more work just to do it the basic way.