What would be my own ideal Linux distribution?

There was a question addressed to me recently, after publishing the "Divergence in the distros" article. The person asked me

You tested many distros so you maybe have some pros/cons seen on distros to share.

That made me think about the most perfect distribution I'd like to get, ever. Let me share these thoughts with you.

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Available packages

The ideal distribution should have packages available for all the software I regularly use. And this should be available in the default repositories. I should not have a requirement to compile software, or to add some obscure repositories to get the things I use.

My actual list of "must haves" is not that vast: LibreOffice (OpenOffice would also do), Chrome or Chromium browser, Skype, VLC, VNC client, PuTTY, Samba, Samba client, Qutim or MRA plugin for Pidgin, together with Pidgin itself, all the multimedia enabling plugins.

You may think that all these packages are already available in most distributions currently on the market. You would be surprised that's not true.

In addition, some distributions have an ideology that insists "if you can't compile software from source, you should not use this distribution". Sorry, guys, that's not my choice.

Localisation

The distribution should be localised for as many languages as possible. For me in particular, it means at least two languages: British English and Russian. Unfortunately, not many distributions and their authors think about non-English speaking users and communities. Some of them only think about their local communities and release their distribution in the local language only. That's not that bad actually. But to conquer my heart, you would need to support Russian.

This "localisation" issue is actually two-fold.

Menus, texts, documentation

Of course all of these have to be in local language, if I choose this in my configuration or during the installation. That's not a show-stopper for me, because I know English well enough to work with English menu and documentation. But if you want me to recommend the distribution to my friends, please support their language. Not all of them know English well enough.

Keyboard layouts

There should be an easy way to configure multiple keyboard layouts and switch between them using a keyboard shortcut. This is actually one of the most common things I tested in my reviews. Unfortunately, it does not always depend on the distribution, but on the Desktop Environment they choose. Most modern DEs like Unity, KDE4, GNOME, Xfce, MATE, Cinnamon don’t have this problem. However, there were issues with KDE3 and LXDE. For the latter, the ROSA team made their keyboard layout switch easy to use in their distribution. Lubuntu 13.04 has taken a similar, but slightly different, approach. Some DEs (e.g. Enlightment) have, unfortunately, fundamental flaws that make them unacceptable for me.

Community

The distribution should have a community which is easy to reach, responsive and nice. I should admit that most of the communities I tried to talk to are like this.

Unfortunately, that's not always true. The PCLOS community, for example, is "too friendly" in a swarm fashion. If they find you enjoy their distro, you are accepted and you're their best friend, part of the swarm. But if they find you don't like some feature in PCLOS, they'll bite you to death. Virtually, of course!

Even more extreme than PCLOS is the Aptosid community, which can frequently be newbie-unfriendly and sarcastic.

Graphical interface

The distribution of my love should have a graphical interface for all the configuration aspects I need. I should not have to leave the GUI or move to the terminal each time I change some configuration. Of course, it does not mean that there should be no Terminal or text file editor at all. It is necessary for some fine-tuning operations and queries, but not for normal configuration.

In these terms, again, most modern Desktop Environments are very near to perfection. The only exceptions I'd like to highlight here are Enlightment, which I've already mentioned before, and Conky-reliant distributions. Unfortunately, I have still never found a nice graphical configurator for Conky.

Conclusion

The list is not that long, as you can see. And the items from this list are almost achieved by many distribution teams. Unfortunately, there are still items to work on.

I've recently re-installed three different distributions on my new laptop: Debian 7 Wheezy Xfce, Mageia 3 KDE and Linux Mint 15 Olivia Cinnamon. The closest to the "ideal" of these three is Cinnamon, I must admit, with Mageia following very close. Debian, for well-known reasons, comes far behind. It does not mean that I dislike Debian. I like it. But there are some aspects that will never make Debian my personal ideal Linux Distribution.

Is it possible to get such a distro? I hope the day will come!

In the meantime, if you want to try any distribution, but cannot create a disk with it yourself for whatever reason, you can always request one from Buy Linux CDs site. The disk will be delivered into your mailbox anywhere in the world!