Which version of Blender is better - 2.79 or 2.80 beta?
Your suggestion would really help!
If you’re a beginner, it makes more sense to start from 2.8. If you start from 2.79 you would have to get used to 2.8 later.
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If I have to start an important job right now I use 2.79, but in general I prefer to use 2.8 to better understand the new interface 
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Same. 2.79 is still quicker for me, but im slowly moving towards 2.8
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No, its not that simple unfortunately. Are you a seasoned 3D pro or just starting out? Using 2.8 as a beginner you would not know whether the fault is yours or Blender’s - and that can be a real PITA. It can happen with previous versions too of course, but probability is much lower, 2.79 is very reliable and battle-hardened.
You may learn a deprecated UI if you start with 2.79, however you should not focus around an UI anyway, it is just the surface, an interface after all. I expect 2.79 will need to be around for some time as a backup and workaround, the transition time until 2.8 will hum flawlessly will drag for a while, so knowing the “old” interface might still be beneficial.
If you’re a veteran on the other hand you know the game. But you would not have asked that question then. 
There are good arguments for both, but I would recommend 2.80 at this point.
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Good point. I personally haven’t found any major bugs or misbehviors in 2.8 recently but yeah you might want a more reliable environment for learning and avoid a beta version in that case.
what DOES suck is if you have about 8 months experience struggling to learn blender 2.79, but then you have to decide if you want to keep learning soon-to-be-deprecated stuff or if you want to struggle with incomplete documentation and features that work differently than you have come to expect.
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I’m using 2.8 with the 2.7x defaults…what can I say, I’m lazy.
its easy to transition. just give it a week 
Which is better? 2.80, which is more stable? 2.79 as 2.80 is in Beta. Given they are free and can happily sit side by side, just install both, a lot of what you’ll learn in 2.79 will serve you just as well in 2.80
If you are a hobbyist and don’t mind the odd strange crash, then 2.80 just feels more fluid to work in.
I would jump into a swimming pool filled with broken glass before going back to the 2.79 interface.
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“Its an easy transition”
IF you already know what you are doing. Or already have some modicum of talent. I’m a perma-noob though 
I am sticking with it however. what else do I have going on?
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Right there with ya bud, I have been “playing” in 3D now for many years, but see people who’ve only used it for 6 months leaving me in the dust. I don’t have to make a living from it though, so learning is half the fun. 
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I am a beginner currently learning
I started a week ago…what do you say now?
Play with 2.80, it’s only going to improve and it’s a lot of fun. 
I’m a beginner, but I’ve already been learning 2.79b for several weeks. I can barely do simple things in Blender. Actions, rigging, bones, function editing, animating transparency, Python, rendering techniques–all these are way beyond what I know… It took me hours of web searching and Blender experimenting to discover how to delete a keyframe! I took several CG Cookie courses and learned maybe 1% of what I need.
Don’t get me wrong–I love Blender as compared to several other tools I played around with. But 2.79 is complex, inconsistent, and frustrating enough for me; 2.8 is just plain scary to imagine.
One of the main goals of 2.80 seems to me have been to make it more accessible for beginners.
If you hate 2.79 you’ll probably love 2.80. Give it a try!