What distro do you use and why?
from Mwa@thelemmy.club to linux@lemmy.ml on 15 Nov 19:29
https://thelemmy.club/post/19210494
from Mwa@thelemmy.club to linux@lemmy.ml on 15 Nov 19:29
https://thelemmy.club/post/19210494
yes i did a os one but i am wondering what distros do you guys use and why,for me cachyos its fast,flexible,has aur(I loved how easy installing apps was) without tinkering.
threaded - newest
OMG I use cachyOS too, for the same reasons, plus I love how much I can tinker with it.
Yeah i kinda like it lets you install desktops that is in arch repos, well because its arch based.
Fedora Silverblue
i am kinda the opposite of you, i find flatpacks meh its alright.
I love flatpak. No more dependency hell!
While true… RIP disk space.
SSDs have become incredibly cheap, and flatpak doesn’t even use that much storage space.
That’s false
I see being facetious is lost. Yes I know they don’t use a lot of space, however, they do package all their own dependencies. That means you do end up with duplicates.
Appimages do. Flatpaks have runtimes. There may be multiple runtimes but space is cheap. You can even spare the amount of space on a phone.
I once thought I should compress my images because they had 10mb each. I was wrong. I just had to put them on my server with immich and I don’t care about the space anymore. One 4k video is so big, all space related problems with apps or images are a real waste of time.
It depends on whether those dependencies are shared with other programs.
Agree
Same here, I use Silverblue as host OS on all of my workstations now, and Arch for nearly all of my containers.
Flatpak for just about everything in the userspace.
I use the Bluefin flavor of Silverblue. I like not having to tinker with my laptop to keep it working, everything happens in the background.
What do people use for command line utilities? The selection on flatpak is a bit sparse
Options include:
brew; this is setup, enabled and configured correctly by default on uBlue projects like Aurora, Bazzite and Bluefin.nixto this effect.rpm-ostree.I use NixOS, Gentoo, and Debian:
Technically NixOS is all compiled from source too (if you disable the binary caches). It has since taken away Gentoo’s raison d’être a bit in my head. Debian still holds a special place in my heart too, for its simplicity and stability!
I wouldn’t say so. We currently don’t hold a candle to USE-flags. Many packages are already configurable but there’s no standard on anything w.r.t. that.
There’s no technical reason we couldn’t have such a standard but it hasn’t happened yet.
I do this with my kernel & a couple of applications that either compile super fast anyhow or at runtime benefit from further compiler optimizations.
Arch because it helped me understand the os better and i like tinkering. Also pacman and the aur
Another reason why am using cachyos
Fedora, it has KDE spin and quite recent packages.
edit: typos
I wonder what you will think of lmde its linux mint with a debian base instead of ubuntu (It keeps some stuff for eg the desktop updated).
I’ve seen lmde mentioned on Mint website but if I recall correctly they also presented it like a somewhat experimental version?
I remember there was only lmde 6 with download to 32bit and 64bit
LMDE is snappy as hell and stable as a rock
Never tried lmde but love to try it if cachyos started breaking down.
EndeavorOS. Because I wanted to have a rolling release distribution that is always up to date, and one that is good supported by maintainers and community. Good documentation is very important to me. And I trust the team behind EndeavorOS and Archlinux.
Also the manual approach of many things and the package manager based on Archlinux is very nice. I also like the building of custom packages that is then installed with the package manager (basically my own AUR package). The focus on terminal stuff without too much bloat by default is also a huge plus.
Prob the reason why i hated garauda (Idk if is it because i picked the dragonized gaming ver)
Probably. I’m definitely not a fan of Garuda Linux (never used it to be honest). The styling and the bloat are not my taste. But the most important thing to me is, if I can trust those developers and maintainers? And I don’t trust most non common distros. Looking at their webpage, they also have a KDE lite version with less bloat and bare minimum packages to get started. This is actually awesome!
Sadly its kde only.
What do you mean by personal package manager?
I didn’t say “personal package manager”. Do you refer to the part “basically my own AUR package”?
pacman, the package manager of Archlinux that is also used in EndeavourOS, allows for installing custom packages. There is another tool part of Archlinux that let you build custom packages. These custom packages can be installed on your system, which is then seen like a normal package and handled this way with all the defined dependencies and information about the package. You can install the package from a local location, it does not need to be online repository.Then you can upload it to the AUR, which is exactly that: Arch User Repository. But you don’t have to upload it. Either way such a custom build package is what I referred to my own AUR package. For more information see: wiki.archlinux.org/title/Arch_User_Repository
I use Fedora simply because I got a Framework and the fingerprint reader didn’t work in (K)Ubuntu so I tried Fedora as a little test. It worked, so I just stuck with it - everything else worked as I wanted, and it gave me the opportunity to try a completely new distribution.
Maybe bcs kubuntu is using a older kernel.
Xubuntu. Convenience of ubuntu, less cluttered UI.
Ubuntu for my servers, and Linux Mint for my Workstation.
I grew up using Debian-based distros, so it’s what I’m comfortable with. I like how Mint seems to “just work” most of the time, especially with samba shares and usb peripherals.
Ubuntu server is primarily because it’s incredibly easy to get support when you need it.
yeah i love linux mint just works
Linux Mint, because I don’t like to tinker with the system, I like good defaults (and Mints has them).
Yk what I LOVE THAT, Why i liked linux mint when i was new.
Well technically Mint has one terrible default nowadays that is hidden unverified Flatpaks.
I do agree cinnamon,mate and xfce us not enough but I found cinnamon the least buggy option.
I avoid flatpaks, so I don’t mind.
Sure but Flatpak is the package format for new users and it’s a very bad decision for a beginner focused distro to restrict it.
After quite a bit of agonizing, I eventually landed on openSUSE Tumbleweed. I chose a rolling release distro because on my desktop I want to be up-to-date. Having used Gentoo a long time ago, I didn’t want a distro that takes effort to install and set up. openSUSE is somewhat popular with an active community and decent documentation in case I run in to issues. I also considered the fact it’s based in Germany, because EU has at least some decent privacy laws. I was put off by the fact its backed by SUSE, but that’s a two-edged sword.
Right now I’m content with Tumbleweed, but I’m keeping an eye on OpenMandriva Lx if I feel like switching.
I wish it was not hard getting nvidia drivers on opensuse.
i see people saying that, but the process was almost automatic to me. what issues are you having?
When I try to install the Nonfree nvidia drivers, it just doesn’t work and wont show nvidia gtx 1650 it would say my gpu is llvmpipe that’s it.
Wdym? Installing Nvidia drivers on openSUSE is just one simple command:
sudo zypper in nvidia-driver-G06-kmp-defaultThat’s all, no additional configuration required, even the kernel arguments will be handled by the Nvidia driver.
I would try to install everything called nvidia nvidia driver I didn’t end up getting it working.
Have you tried recently?
You used to either have to install them manually, or enable the nVidia repo.
But I reinstalled Tumbleweed a few months ago and it auto-detected and added the repo for me and everything. I didn’t even have to disable nouveau first or anything like that, if I recall correctly.
no
.
Huh???
It’s spam
Oh
Gentoo because I like it.
And portage.
CachyOS. I use it because I am a fan of Arch based systems, rolling releases etc, but CachyOS is optimised for my generation of hardware, and has lots of good default configurations for various apps. They have a customised proton version, a good default fish profile etc.
tl;dr It’s Arch, but optimised, and slightly more pre-configured out of the box.
Same thing.
Garuda for me. The reasons are similar; just replace some optimization with some convenience. It’s a bit garish by default but pleasant to use.
NixOS for most things, Debian on some servers as a docker host
I recently started using compose2nix, and I’m enjoying it.
github.com/aksiksi/compose2nix
Interesting. I’ve using NixOS many years on servers but recently also started using it as a base for docker hosts. Before that I used Ubuntu or Debian for docker hosts, but I figured out I still like the declarative approach even for simple servers like docker hosts. There’s your basic security config, ssh keys and monitoring setup that I used to do imperatively, but I much rather have declaratively now, no matter how small. And enabling docker on NixOS is just a
virtualisation.docker.enable = true;anyway.Oh I know it’s better, problem is I host some stuff my friend group relies on so I don’t want downtime while I figure things out. Also, it’s a bit of a pain in the ass to get NixOS set up on a VPS without native support (I’m on Hetzner and I know it’s possible, it’s just a bit of a hassle). It’s one of those projects that I’ll get to eventually, when I got time. Or so I tell myself
I’m on Hetzner too. You’re right, it is a bit of a hassle. I wish they’d just include a native image into the interface. I use infect and it works quite seamless though github.com/elitak/nixos-infect?tab=readme-ov-file…
I use EndeavourOS Xfce because it’s Arch with pacman and not Flathub or Snap. Plus, I love the simplicity and the performance boost you get with Xfce (even if it’s a small boost with a modern gaming PC).
yo finally someone who loves native packages more then flatpack.
Flatpak annoys me
I kinda agree because you need to allow permissions, it’s more secure it’s just annoying.
Flatpak has its benefits, but there are tradeoffs as well. I think it makes a lot of sense for proprietary software.
For everything else I do prefer native packages since they have fewer issues with interop. The space efficiency isn’t even that important to me; even if space issues should arise, those are relatively easy to work around. But if your password manager can’t talk to your browser because the security model has no solution for safe arbitrary IPC, you’re SOL.
I am pretty sure flatpack is implementing native messaging, Which is what is used by the password manager:
github.com/flatpak/xdg-desktop-portal/issues/655
Ah, so they actually got that implemented. Nice.
Linux sub, post with 40 comments under 1 hour
Is this the year...
Damn, not a single pop-os enjoyer here?!
maybe bcs its posted at 11pm in my timezone (gmt +3)
I tried PopOS on my laptop but found it fucky so I tried Fedora KDE and it works. Too many steps Debian -> Ubuntu -> PopOS.
I started using linux seriously with Manjaro, but since I didn’t know what AUR really was I fucked my system up (thank NVIDIA drivers for that). Then I switched to arch, learned everything I should have known on the arch wiki. So yeah, I use arch btw.
For me i started linux seriously with fedora,Some packages was hard to get so i went with cachyos.
Fedora because I like this out of the box look more than Ubuntu and it runs my games well with my nvidia card
I have one Ubuntu and one fedora server. Honestly they’re both fine.
I have Bazzite on a laptop for the ease of use and general resistance to breakage, and Spiral Linux in a VM. The latter works flawlessly that way, like it was always meant to be in a VM.
Previously arch now NixOS, just love the reproducibility.
Arch. I had some tinkering with other distros in the past but wanted to configure pretty much everything. Running it with Cinnamon. I love pacman and AUR and have been able to not break it so far after a year of being installed which is a new record for me 😂
NixOS because it’s easy to understand—I can pop open any .nix file in my config and see exactly what is being set up, so I don’t have to mentally keep track of innumerable imperative changes I would otherwise make to the system, and thus lose track of the entropy over time.
elementary! I like it, been using it since ~2018, I like its style and I don’t mind reinstalling for major updates. They’re pretty seldom if you’re on the LTS branch anyway
Fedora.
Most of the others either booted to a black screen after install, or the track pad was somewhat uncontrollable when scrolling. Older Asus laptop with separate GPU.
PopOS but I’d like to switch to NixOS
Try it! Here’s a proof of concept that I’ve made that shows NixOS could even be used as a base for a very simple OS that abstracts the Nix away almost completely. Maybe the source code is of interest to you.
github.com/nixup-io/desk-os
I need a way to backup my files between the two OS to do the move. I will look at your repo
I recommend borgbackup.
I’ve hopped distros alot and then just felt most comfortable with arch linux. I try other distros and then just go back to arch linux everytime. I just love the AUR and the utilities that are available to arch linux. The wiki is also very good.
Best wiki and aur fr.
Debian on most my machines. Can’t trust commercially backed distros any more. I’m tired of chacing cutting edge stuff. Like things to just work.
I can agree, my goal now is to find a distro that keeps some stuff updated not everything like kernel etc.
And there is ever decreasing need for cutting edge with containers and sandboxing. And hardware improvement is no longer so rapid so buying the hotness of 2+ years ago is cheap and effective and well supported.
Debian and derived is my go up generally, stable and I like apt, great out of the box on every machine I’ve used and personally found pretty much everything I want to use or run has debian and Ubuntu explicitly called out in their setup documentation. I use Ubuntu server a lot for work, I’m comfortable with it and it’s supported in every cloud environment I’ve touched. Debian on my laptop, bench machine, armbian on my 3d printers, Ubuntu server on my home server (though I kinda want to move that to debian too, just lazy and it works)
I’ve got arch on my desktop, could have probably gone for debian unstable, but figured I’d go for it. I use aura for package management. Linux is linux though, be real that I personally don’t find much of a difference beyond package management.
Is aura like nix?
Not used nix so can’t comment on that, aura is a pacman wrapper + aur helper -S for package operations, -A for aur, gives you similar options too so -Au to update like -Su in pacman. Has a lot of other options that I’m probably not taking advantage of, but for me, gives me a single place to manage most everything (flathub too but I don’t use a lot of flatpaks, just nice to have)
Ohh i thought its another package manager similar to nix and homebrew.
mint cinnamon because on my system it has no major issues and everything is easy to configure. i don’t have a lot of spare time so i can’t spend hours or even days troubleshooting why something won’t install or run. most other distros have been annoyingly buggy or too difficult to set up.
Pop. I just need ubuntu without snap, distro’s default look doesnt matter since I’ll just use sway/i3wm.
Though the fact that they’re building their own tiling DE could make me stick with it fully when it comes out.
Cosmic?
Yep. It’s still in alpha stage, but I really like what I saw from it right now.
I started with mint cinnamon and then tried out bazzite and nobara but they both gave me issues so I’m back to mint because it really does “just work”
My server is running mint currently, but I’m going to switch to fedora at some point soon. Mostly because I have to deal with RHEL at work and I’d like to better familiarize myself with it.
Devuan because I don’t like systemd
Artix for similar reasons
I like Manjaro
PopOS. It was the easiest to get my Nvidia GPU set up and plays all the games that I wanna play without too much pain. I’ve been meaning to try something like Arch with KDE, something like what my SteamDeck is using… but I don’t wanna fuck around setting up Arch.
Arch based distros if that’s fine?
If you wanna try Arch + KDE without hassle, well Arch has an easier installer now, but I use EndeavourOS. It’s a lovely smooth Arch experience!
Very easy installer with lots of options to choose from. :)
Bazzite (with KDE). My desktop is mostly for discord and gaming - I don’t have the kind of job that can be done from home. So when I get to use it I want it to just work, and look good.
I’ve used a bunch of distros and I’ve sort of become an atomic evangelist. Which put like that sounds like a great band name.
No Void here?
Oh well… I surely don’t use it because it’s popular…
I went into void as my first DIY distro, mainly because I wanted to mess around with window managers and it was a very good experience. Runit made my underpowered laptop boot into linux in like 4 seconds, crazy fast. XBPS package manager was always really really fast too. I like the fact that nearly everything you need is in the official repo, instead of having to delve into the depths of something like the AUR. I also managed to make a contribution to the repos with the help of the community on the IRC chat rooms which were very noob friendly. Overall just a solid experience.
.
I was thinking the same thing, but I don’t like void because it doesn’t have every package I want And they only offer old or extremely specific ones.
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Ubuntu because I’m old, uncool, and tired
Hilarious to have to look this low for it, but who want to stand up and declare themselves mainstream.
Polished, reliable, and solid, and snaps are not a big deal or an insidious evil, and neither is Canonical. They make missteps for sure. But with containers etc stability is more important than immediate updates and it’s excellent about kernel updates for new hardware. It’s slick Debian, and if the fuckery ever gets real switching to Debian is easy.
Kubuntu, because when I got my Vega 56 GPU on release day (August 14, 2017), I had to download the proprietary driver straight from AMD to get it working, and Ubuntu was the only distro supported by both it and Steam at the time. (Otherwise, I would’ve picked Debian or Mint.)
I don’t love Ubuntu (especially how they push Snap), but I can’t be bothered with the hassle of reinstalling my OS.
How difficult was it to run games?
In 2017? Well, that’s an interesting question. On one hand, it definitely wasn’t as easy as it is now. On the other hand, I was motivated to ditch Windows and willing to make the gaming sacrifices necessary to make that happen. The last version of Windows I used was 7, and I was determined that 10 would never touch this machine – or any computer of mine going forward, for that matter. I also was done putting up with 7, given that Microsoft was starting to backport 10’s spyware and forced-upgrade BS to it by then.
It’s been a while, so I’m fuzzy on the details of what I was playing between 2017 and 2018 (when Proton came out). I think I just limited myself to the subset of my Steam games that had native Linux versions (e.g. TF2 and other Valve first-party games, Don’t Starve, Cities Skylines, etc.), supplemented with PlayOnLinux for Star Trek Online, which, being an MMO I was already committed to, was pretty much the only exception I made. Otherwise, my attitude became “if the developer can’t be bothered to support my OS, that’s their loss, not mine, and I don’t need their shitty Windows-only game anyway.”
After Proton came out and I flipped that switch to “enable Steam Play for all other titles”, I think the majority of my Steam games “Just Worked” – yes, even back at that initial release – and the ones that didn’t became compatible pretty rapidly over the next couple of years. With one exception, I don’t think I’ve had trouble getting a game working since the start of the pandemic, if not earlier. At this point, I’ve softened my “I won’t buy a new game if it doesn’t natively support Linux stance” and instead simply expect every game I buy to work. And they have!
(That one exception was Star Trek Online, which I had continued running via PlayOnLinux because (a) why mess with a working config, and (b) the Steam version of STO wants to permanently link your STO account to your Steam account, which I didn’t want to do. One day, though, they updated the launcher or something and it quit working. I eventually gave up trying to fix it in PlayOnLinux and decided to use Proton for it instead. But I still didn’t want to link my accounts, so I had to jump through these weird hoops where I installed the Steam version, but didn’t log in or play it, and instead re-imported it as a non-Steam game pointing at the executable for the Steam version and then fiddled with the compatibility settings to find a version of Proton that worked. That’s still the configuration I’m using for it to this day.)
Someone told me that he used alot of tinkering to play games before proton.
I mean, yeah, if you were trying to get a game to run using bare WINE in like <2010 or something, you were gonna be troubleshooting it for a while (and might still fail just because the functionality hadn’t actually caught up yet). By 2017, though, DirectX etc. support had improved drastically (Valve’s first attempt at SteamOS was already a few years old by then), so the main issue was figuring out the right configuration (which version of Windows to mimic, installing supporting libraries, etc.) and tools like PlayOnLinux and Lutris went a long way towards crowdsourcing and automating that.
oh
My gpu twin! I was also on Kubuntu at the time for the same reasons.
I use Arch with Hyprland because it’s great.
I heard hyprland is buggy.
It’s quite new so bugs are expected. Now it’s stabilised a lot after moving to aquamarine.
Kubuntu 24.04 because it’s a solid desktop and I have nothing against Snap. If it works then I don’t care if it’s a deb flat or snap. p PPAs were fun and exciting but I broke my system more than once with them back 10 years.
EndeavourOS. It’s just easy to install and I basically use it like Arch
I recently installed OpenSuse, I have been using FreeBSD mostly, but have used linux through the years. I decided to go with an rpm based distro and I’ve always likes the chameleon mascot of Suse. I’m used to Debian based linux, so it’s been a slight adjustment but it’s been nice and smooth. I’m running Tumbleweed right now and all my Steam games work, as well as my 3d Windows applications via wine. It just works* I am too old and tired to spend time tweaking anymore.
I just installed Pop!_OS 22.04, after finally ditching Windows 11 entirely. I picked it because it seemed easy to use, well suited for gaming, and popular with good support.
So far, everything has been great!
Windows 10? That’s still supported ig.
Fedora Silverblue. It does what I need so I can get on with my life.
At work a mix of red hat, fedora, centos, and red hawk. At home mint debian spin. It just works and games run great. I don’t have time to deal with the red hat crap if i’m not getting paid.
Mint pleb on desktop because it’s stable and just works, bazzite on steam deck for installing my own games.
NixOS because it’s the only usable stab at sustainable system configuration.
All that follows is my personal opinion, but for ease of writing, I’m gonna present it as facts.
Once you have grasped the advantage that Nix offers, all the fundamentally different solutions just seem s o inferior. When I first tried NixOS on a decommissioned notebook, the concept immediately made sense. Granted, I didn’t understand the language features very well – I mostly used it for static configuration with most stuff just written verbatim in
configuration.nix, though I did use flakes very early on because of Lanzaboote. But just the fact that you had a central configuration in a single language that was able to cross-reference itself across different parts of the system absolutely blew me out of the water. I was a very happy and content Arch user, even proficient enough to run my own online repository that built from a clean chroot for AUR packages (if you use Arch with AUR packages on multiple systems, check out the awesome aurutils!), but after seeing the power of NixOS in action, I switched over all my machines as soon as I could - desktop, virtual servers (thanks nixos-anywhere!), main notebook and NAS.People often praise the BSDs for their integrated approach – NixOS manages to bring that approach to Linux. Apart from GUIX System that I never tried because Secure Boot was a requirement when I last looked at other distributions, none of them have tackled the problem that NixOS solves, and it’s not even certain if they actually understand it. Conceptually, it plays on a whole different level. No more unrecoverable systems, even with broken kernels – just boot the previous configuration. Want to try changes without any commitment?
nixos-rebuild testgot you. Need an app quick?nix shell nixpkgs#appit is.Plus the ecosystem is just fantastic. The aforementioned
nixos-anywherereally helps with remote provisioning, usingdiskoto declaratively setup filesystems and mounts, you havedevenvwhich is a really good solution for development environments, both regarding reproducibility and features, and many more that I can’t mention here. There is nothing comparable, and the possibilities are unlike in any other ecosystem.It’s not perfect for sure though, and documentation is sparse. The language concepts which allow one to “unlock” the most powerful features are different from what most people know.
I was lucky enough to have some downtime at work to get into the system a bit deeper (this was still for work though, just not my core skillset) by implementing a “framework” for our needs which forced me to not just copy and paste stuff, though I definitely did get inspired from other solutions, but to actually better understand the module system (I think?), thinking in attribute sets, writing your own actual modules, function library and so on. But in the end, it was definitely worth it, and I’m unaware of any other system that would allow what Nix and NixOS allowed me to build.
100%. Took me a good year to learn it well enough to be confident with what I was doing but I’ve now got it on everything with a single flake for all my hosts. I love that my user profile is configured the same everywhere. I can add a new tool or config or alias or whatever and it’s the same on every computer.
I’ve now written a module to define all the services I self host and from that it generates both nginx config and DNS config on different hosts.
The main advantage for me though is I only have to solve problems once. Once it’s there in the config I’m confident it’s solved and I won’t need to worry about it again. My previous server was 10 years old and there was stuff configured I’d long forgotten about how it worked or even why I did it.
this but since Nix is licensed with MIT and deals with weapon manufacturers, i had to go
GUIX!!!, it is everything
While I do get your sentiment, we currently see in Ukraine what happens if you don’t have a defense industry: You’re reliant on other countries to supply you in case a hostile nation notices that you’re lacking it.
Plain old Fedora.
I know the hurdles, i know what to expect, and I’ve never been surprised by it.
Immutable sounds nice, AUR sounds nice, NixOS sounds nice, but i am utterly confident in my current choice’s reliability and comfortable with its idiosyncracies. Everything i want to do works very well.
If i had less time/energy or had to switch, Kubuntu would be my second choice. Less frequent updates and fewer creature comforts, but also very reliable.
I’m in the same boat. I was a kde neon person for a very long time, but I eventually got tired of some weird issues I was having that I couldn’t find a fix for. tried fedora on a bit of a whim and everything just worked. Nvidia drivers were a breeze to set up, gnome is very nice out of the box and doesn’t take the configuring I’m used to on kde, and even just having gnome boxes pre installed is super useful and I get to skip the virtualboxes setup. very impressed with it overall. never going back
the 9 month update cycle is my biggest issue, and it’s not a big deal
Bazzite, I want my PC to just work and not require me to maintain it, on top of that I need it to be game-ready and have good color management for work related stuff.
from the comments, there’s a split between
i wish this split was made more explicit, because more often than not someone comes looking for recommendations for linux as a tool, but someone else responds expecting they want linux as a toy. then the person will try out linux and will leave because it’s not what they want, not knowing that there is a kind of linux that is what they want
Yes! Great way of putting it. It’s hard to explain how just using an OS can be a fun hobby in itself.
OpenSUSE Tumbleweed does it all for me. I work and play games on it and stuff, but my laptop is less mission critical, so I run EndeavourOS on it and experiment with fun layouts and everything is all “frutiger-aero-esque”. It feels like how I nostalgicallyremember those WinXP-7 days!
Snapper rollbacks with BTRFS are incredible for letting you play around with an OS you actually use, and still giving you a cushion to fall back on. :D
My little media streamer / guest PC has Mint. Nice, maybe a little boring, predictable, reliable. Ahhh simplicity. :)
Lots of folks use those “toy” distros to accomplish specialized tasks that are cumbersome or impossible on other distros. I’d describe it more as “general purpose” vs “niche”
that could be true, but my comment was the takeaway i had from reading the other comments in this thread (and from previous experience elsewhere on the internet). most people answering “arch” or “gentoo” are saying, themselves, that they like it because it “teaches them how linux works” or that they “like compiling stuff”. clearly the focus is tinkering with the system as an end in of itself, not using the system as a means to another end
That’s a good point, i agree there are also plenty of folks who use niche distros partly as a hobby
‘Toy’ feels strange to me here. It’s more of a just-works vs power-tool distinction. Sometimes people like tools that require you to RTFM because the deeper understanding has concrete benefits; it’s not just fun. User-friendliness is not all upside, it is still a tradeoff.
You’re absolutely right about hurting new users by not making the destinction, whatever label is used.
Fedora Kinoite. I like KDE, atomic distros and the fact that Fedora is the only (at least that I know of) distro that has proper SELinux implementation.
I also play games on this system, so having newer kernel and Mesa versions help.
AFAIK, openSUSE Aeon(/Kalpa) does as well*.
I guess I’m that guy in this thread constantly bringing up his current distro of choice lol… But have you tried Bazzite? From what I understand it’s basically Kinoite but built with gaming in mind.
If you have, I’d be curious as to what differences there were between it and Kinoite…
I have tried Bazzite before and understand its appeal. I am an ex-Arch user so I prefer the system to be as minimal as possible. Fedora fits my requirements just right and Bazzite does not seem to bring anything to the table that I miss from Fedora.
Debian Testing. It isn’t “recommended” but it works fine.
Obviously if you want AUR you need an Arch variant, in which case just pick Arch.
Edit: I needed the why, it’s up to date enough for me and I know apt well.
Debian and Linux Mint.
Debian for mission critical stuff like servers or things I don’t want to futz with, like HTPCs, work machines, etc.
Mint for my gaming desktop because it’s a bit newer on kernels and such.
openSUSE Tumbleweed. I’ve tried switching to Aurora and Bazzite, but ended up using openSUSE again and now I love it even more.
EDIT: Typos.
EDIT 2: I also love tinkering with Void and Alpine on VMs.
Interesting. Have you also tried openSUSE Aeon(/Kalpa)? Though I assume you’re a KDE user and thus waiting for Kalpa to become mature before a test ride.
Could you elaborate on what you didn’t like about Aurora and Bazzite; especially about how that experience made you more appreciative of openSUSE?
Thank you in advance!
That’s right!
Bazzite comes with Lutris and Steam preinstalled as native packages. I don’t use Lutris and want to use Steam as flatpak, so I decided to try Aurora.
For some reason it was surprisingly unstable. I’ve had various issues with KDE, DXVK and a few mainstream errors, that I had to either try to fix myself (like this one) or simply ignore (like this one). I’ve switched back to openSUSE and now I’m happier than ever about openQA existence.
Great response! Much appreciated!
For devices I need to be productive on, I have LMDE 6. It is rock solid being based on stable Debian, but with the niceties you expect from Mint.
For my gaming PC, I’ve got Bazzite on it and so far so good. Just used it for entertainment and gaming but if I were doing coding or app development I’d either have to adjust how I do that to suit an atomic distro, or I’d just use LMDE as I feel I have easier control of what I’m doing on there
NixOS & OpenWRT are my two. NixOS’s Nix language as declarative config is such a great tool for setting up & maintaining a machines for the long-term that despite the initial learning curve has paid off in the long run (Guix or a Nix successor should also be in the same category). OpenWRT is the purpose-built tool it is for having an OS for a router with low overhead & a UI that can be easier to understand the config when networking isn’t something you do on the regular.
Tuxedo OS. Before that, I was very happy with Fedora, and then I got a tuxedo laptop and tried their distro. Now, I keep using that because I started to enjoy KDE, and I really like their hardware support and how they test and maintain the distro.
Mint, because it seems like the easiest OS for someone who doesn’t know wtf a flatpak is
The other hard drive has Windows, because Fusion360 doesn’t work on Linux. Hey Autodesk, can you hear me? Make it happen please
I remember autodesk said that “fusion is too windows dependent”
Try solvespace or openscad or blender depending on your use-case.
Fedora with GNOME.
I’ve been using it for over than 10 years in my main computer.
It simply works, it’s nice, fresh packages, stable, GNOME is productivity champion (at least I know all the shortcuts, and how to tweak it to my daily use). I also know how to build and manipulate RPM packages, so it’s pretty convenient.
What is the benefit of building / manipulating packages?
Mostly for fun/learning and to tweak some Fedora packages to my needs. I keep my own RPM repository.
oh, fedora,
fedora was so stable i had to run to arch-linux as there was nothing to tinker with
afaik, fedora is the testing distro for RHEL. I also felt this way, when a new gnome version released much earlier than for Arch and it had an obvious bug that could be catched with little testing.
And many issues I found in Fedora’s bug tracker was auto closed by the new release. Which is quite frequent. Reviewing the bugs is not that frequent.
I’ve been using Fedora for the last 5 years and never had to reinstall the OS. I’ve been upgrading with no issues whatsoever.
With Ubuntu, I had to reinstall everything on every update because of errors. Not on EVERY update of course, but often enough to make me want to stick to LTSs.
I use Debian on my server and Arch on my gaming PC and laptop. Both distros offer minimal installs so I can just add the packages I need and avoid the ones I don’t. Debian offers a nice stable base for running my services with minimal downtime and Arch has the most up to date packages for all the cutting edge features I want on desktop.
My preference as well.
I recommend giving Bazzite a try for gaming. I switched to it from Arch (well EOS), and it’s been wonderful.
I daily drive secureblue.
Long story short; I love me some security. Unfortunately, My device is far from ideal for running Qubes OS. From within the remaining options, secureblue comes out on top for me.
I use Bazzite so that it matches with my Steam Deck since SteamOS still isn’t an actual distro to play with yet…
Manjaro on main pc and phone. Proxmox (debian) on server
Mint for my desktop system. It just does exactly what I want it to, has good compatibility with software and Cinnamon is my DE of choice.
NixOS for my server, because being able to use one config repo and format for everything is so nice.
Endeavour OS because once you go rolling you can never go back.
because it keeps rolling ?
😆 I meant back to static release
I understand
I should have been clearer.
I loved EndeavourOS, but I’m just not sure bleeding edge is for me. Mostly because I will forget to update for a week, and suddenly there are 500 updates, all with interconnected dependencies and pacman is just like “wtf dude?”
I’m not sure I really gained any benefit from that over using a more stable release. I switched to Bazzite a few months back, and it’s been amazing. Immutable is very interesting, and it’s made for the most stable PC I’ve ever owned.
Highly recommend Bazzite for gamers (or I guess it’s good for multimedia too), or if not, one of the other Fedora-based immutable distros.
The only time I come close to that number of updates (300 - 350) is when KDE Applications and KDE is updated at the same time. I update twice a week.
This is one of the little things I love about Gentoo. It’s rolling, but not bleeding edge.
Plus, you can opt into bleeding edge either per package or for all packages. It’s honestly a flexibility that doesn’t even require a source-based distro, so Arch could do it too.
btw i use Arch, i use it because i found lot less effort it takes to do anything and it’s stable, i do think there is some bug with QTcreator, gotta see it’s os issue or QT issue.
I use NixOS for my desktop because
I hate myselfyou can configure everything without needing to edit a bunch of different config files that use different configuration languages.I use Arch btw for my Minecraft server because I am crazy.
<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/26bc6b37-e241-49bc-9875-388aaf8ab017.jpeg">
Because the logo is cool :)
Arch. I need the AUR for certain applications, and the high degree of customizability and opportunity for learning appeal to me as a relatively new-ish Linux user (going on a few years now, most of that time having been on Arch).
I’ve been using Bazzite for a few months now (switched from EndeavourOS, which was great) and it’s been amazing. I’m sold on atomic/immutable. I have never had a PC this stable, including every Windows PC I’ve had.
And it’s perfect for gaming. There are weird little tweaks and settings that I had to do on EOS to get my GPU working correctly, etc., and they all just work out of the box in Bazzite (I did get the iso image made specifically for my laptop, which definitely helps). It’s super impressive actually.
And distrobox (BoxBuddy comes installed) can be used to access the AUR or whatever if I feel the need to. Just fire up an Arch box, and have at it.
Guix SD because i like editing declarative ((`scheme)) config for my system in emacs
Man gnu endorsed distros are quite rare here.
Arch.
Because of pacman. Building and writing packages is simple and dependencies are slim. Also packages are recent. And most likely “there is an AUR package for that”. Also stack transitions arrive early, like pipewire.
Also let’s not forget Arch Wiki, i bet you have read it as a non Arch user.
I administer Arch on 8 machines including gaming rigs, home server, web server, kids laptop, wifes gaming desktop, audio workstation and machine learning rig and a bunch of dev laptops. I also use ArchARM on RPi for some home automation.
Never considered switching since I switched from Ubuntu over 15 years ago.
I do have experience with several other rpm and apt based distros.
Debian Testing (laptop, workstation and RPIs) since it works best for me. Tried Gentoo, Arch, OpenSUSE and several others. Also, I’ve been using FreeBSD for some time.
I use TuxedoOS. I wanted something that kept up with the latest KDE updates which ran a cleaned up version of Ubuntu… that’s TuxedoOS to a T. I had looked at other options like Kubuntu or just installing KDE over something like PopOS, but TuxedoOS was the most stable and up to date of those options in my testing.
That said, I have run into innumerable problems on it due to apt repos that it doesn’t include which come standard on Ubuntu.
Void because I don’t like gnome, primarily because it uses more than 50% of my resources, so I need something lightweight and have had bad experience with arch. I’ve had some hiccups with void but it wasn’t something I couldn’t fix. The downside is that it there are no package repository mirrors in my region, and sometimes I have to change mirrors to install packages, and some applications are not packages for void, so I have to look for open source alternatives that I have to compile.
Fedora.
I’ve tried them all but found it’s the most reliable. It’s upgrades are even more reliable than Macos and Windows.
Packages are very up to date but also well tested. Sometimes even newer than Arch for short periods.
The community is awesome.
I love Gnome, I’ve found it’s more consistent than even MacOs in its design. And it has perfect keyboard shortcuts.
Fedora KDE, because my preferred distro Mint Cinnamon doesn’t at the moment have good support for things like FreeSync.
Idk if you use smth like gamescope to enable it in cinnamon
Dietpi. Because I’m forced to.
🔥
<img alt="" src="https://i.imgur.com/iJprU6W_d.webp?maxwidth=760&fidelity=grand">