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What is your go-to Linux distro and why?


I'd like to settle on a distro, but none of them seem to click for me. I want stability more than anything, but I also value having the latest updates (I know, kind of incompatible).

I have tested Pop!_Os, Arch Linux, Fedora, Mint and Ubuntu. Arch and Pop being the two that I enjoyed the most and seemed the most stable all along... I am somewhat interested in testing NixOS although the learning curve seems a bit steep and it's holding me back a bit.

What are you using as your daily drive? Would you recommend it to another user? Why? Why not?

in reply to pluja

Arch Linux is my go-to distro because I can literally install it in half the time that it takes a lot of others. I also like that it is very lightweight.
in reply to pluja

Fedora, really uptodate software, GNOME, stability of a server distro.
in reply to pluja

Debian for my work. It is stable and I’ve been using it for many years.
in reply to pluja

If you're looking for stable and up to date, give openSUSE Tumbleweed a shot.
in reply to L3ft_F13ld!

This is the way.

I changed GPU recently and felt like doing a fresh install and tried openSUSE Tumbleweed (was using EndeavourOS before). Very stable and fast.

ElectricMachman doesn't like this.

in reply to L3ft_F13ld!

I'm actually in the middle of deciding on a new distro, I'm trying to get away from Ubuntu/snap, but Debian 12 with LxQt or Xfce isn't playing nice with my laptop. I just finished writing out Mint and Tumbleweed flash drives, gonna give them both a shot, but I've never really used openSUSE before.

Any tips? Particular things you like about it

This entry was edited (1 year ago)
in reply to Revan343

Honestly, what I like about it started with the mascot. Otherwise, I like the fact that the rolling release has automatic testing to make sure it's mostly reliable. Many people will also tell you how amazing YaST, their "control panel", is. There's definitely some stuff to get used to, like patterns and zypper. But, for a set and forget system, it's hard to beat IMO.
This entry was edited (1 year ago)
in reply to L3ft_F13ld!

Absolutely. Rolling distro with stability is very rare in the linux world. Opensuse TW is rock solid with updated software. I stopped distro hopping because of it.
in reply to pluja

You tried most of them. You found Arch enjoyable, so I'd stick to that for the Wiki, the community, and flexibility.

NixOS looks interesting too, but nothing beats Arch in terms of having so much software at one-click distance with the almighty AUR.

in reply to pluja

I have been a Linux user since the Red Hat Halloween release (back in the twentieth century) and have run SUSE, Slackware, Red Hat, Arch, Debian and countless of their forks. Currently I'm settled on Pop!_OS 22.04 NVIDIA for my daily driver laptop with a built-in Nvidia GPU. It is rock solid and can run my three displays, each with a different resolution and refresh rate, without ever missing a beat. For everything else I use Debian and most of my clients run either RHEL or Oracle SEL on their production servers.

TL;DR: Pop!_OS daily driver and Debian for everything else.

in reply to pluja

I’ve hopped around to a bunch of different distros, but I always return to Debian Stable. I don’t really need the most bleeding-edge packages for my system, due to my use case.

Most of my actual apps are installed via Flatpak, so they’re all pretty recent, while still being on a rock-solid stable distribution.

in reply to pluja

VanillaOS is pretty neat. It has an immutable (kind of) OS, lets you choose which package formats you want to use (flatpak, snap, appimage, etc) and leverages containers (a la Distrobox) and their package manager Apx to give you seamless access to packages on other distros. It's Ubuntu-based right now but the next release is switching to debian.

To be fair, I don't have much time on it. My daily drivers are a chromebook and a steamdeck, but I did dust off an old laptop just to check it out for a little bit.

in reply to pluja

Void Linux is the way to go, I've been using it for a few years now with no issues. Currently gaming with arch but I was gaming on void for a while, before I decided to hop. Might go back but switching over is such a hassle at the moment.
in reply to pluja

U want stability stick to debian, bleeding egde apps? NixOs.

Middle ground? Ubuntu Rolling, u get reasonable up to day updates, and reasonable stability.

And remember, the perfect distro is the one u configure, and personalize for u. The distro is only gonna make ur life easier in making it urs, but that's all, I wasted a lot of time understanding this.

Offlein doesn't like this.

in reply to pluja

I use Pop_OS because I really like having so much much GUI control via the keyboard. I'm patiently waiting for Cosmic to update things a bit.
in reply to pluja

Fedora. Mainly because I work at a RHEL shop and I want a daily driver that is somewhat similar to my work environment.
in reply to vermyndax

Not really. As I understand it, RHEL is restricting access to the source code of proprietary things they developed. Does it go against open source principles? Sure. Does it make sense from a business perspective? Absolutely. I was actually surprised that this wasn't the case before.
in reply to pluja

Solus - get updates all the time, don't have to think about reinstalling and don't have to pay attention if an update could break my system
in reply to pluja

I've been using Garuda (arch derivative) for my home and work PC. It works how I want it to, I like that it has BTRFS as default for the file system, and the AUR is such an amazing resource I miss it whenever I use a different distro.

I have a production server that's using Alma at the moment, but with the RHEL news I'm thinking of switching it over to something else, but I'm not sure what yet. I've been using Ubuntu server for some test servers/projects and I like it better than Alma but it still hasn't given me that "wow" factor I feel with Arch so I'm not sure what I'm going to do there...

in reply to pluja

I'm using Arch simply because of familiarity and comfort in using it. That and pacman being fast usually helps me make up my mind whenever I try something else. I really hadn't experienced any major breakage in any of the packages in the standard repos, especially if everything is configured correctly. So I don't really have anything to say against Arch's stability.

I also hear good things about Tumbleweed, so that could be an alternative and more complete out-of-box package, but that also highly depends on how comfortable you'll be with openSUSE's way of doing things.

It all boils down to how you prefer to configure and manage your system and its packages, really. Nothing much more than that. As long it does the job, it's usually fine.

in reply to xan1242

pacman is so fast. I love Fedora but dnf is such a chugger
in reply to pluja

Right now I use pop_os. I bought a System76 laptop so it came with it. I like it because most things just work and I am lazy. Not the biggest gnome fan though. Previous to owning this laptop I tinkered with many distros but usually leaned towards lightweight DEs like xfce.
in reply to AWizard_ATrueStar

I've been toying with the idea of getting one of those. Would you do it again? Do you have any regrets or maybe wish you'd installed it on something else?
in reply to pluja

Linux mint because it works out of the box and I’ve never had an issue installing it on any device I’ve needed.

Most of my office apps are cloud based so all I need is Firefox to get to work. I can also use the live USB to just do work out of that if push really comes to shove.

in reply to pluja

I use Gentoo for my daily driver, and Debian for servers.
in reply to pluja

i settled on fedora kde a few years ago(altho i recently switched to fedora silverblue kde)
imo a nice middleground.

if you are intrested in immutable distros, i can recommend silverblue (not as drastic of a change compared to nixos)

if you are intrested in nixos package management, you might want to try out the nix package manager on your current distro.

an intresting way to get the fresh but stable system you want is to,
install some rock solid distro like debian,
and then use the nix package manager and/or flatpacks to get the fresh software you want.

This entry was edited (1 year ago)

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in reply to pluja

I've been using MX, formerly known as Mepis, for over 15 years now. It's the most stable release I've ever used, and their repos are pretty up to date. The community is great also.
in reply to pluja

openSuse. After my years of distro hopping ended over a decade ago I settled on openSuse Leap and never switched to something else again. It's reliable and gives me the least bullshit. And by now it's the one I have the most experience in.

//edit
Leap on my server and tumbleweed on my work laptop but Leap would be sufficient there, too.

This entry was edited (1 year ago)

Linux reshared this.

in reply to pluja

Endeavour OS for me, use it both on my own laptop and my work one. BTW, it's Arch-based
in reply to cincinmasukmangkok

Intimidated by Arch? Try Manjaro. It's Arch based.
I have it running as my Desktop (x86) and on my RPi (Arm)

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in reply to SamsonSeinfelder

My two cents: Manjaro kinda sucks nowdays and ought to be skipped. Good amount of Arch alternatives.
This entry was edited (1 year ago)

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in reply to pluja

In general, Ubuntu is my go-to when I just want something that works and is reasonably stable. Just pick the spin with the Desktop Environment that you like. I'm using KDE Neon (I realize Neon isn't an Ubuntu flavor or spin) on my daily driver laptop, and Ubuntu MATE on my desktop. I also have an old netbook that usually gets Xubuntu, but currently has Fedora 37 XFCE as an experiment.

It sure is nice that we have to option to distro-hop, either on bare metal or in a VM.

in reply to pluja

Fedora is my daily driver. I install Ubuntu LTS for family/friends, as the more stable software makes supporting them easier.
in reply to pluja

Fedora! To me it sits right at the sweet spot of stability and bleeding edge (they call it "leading edge"), and I'm very happy with how they run things (including the most recent controversy!).
This entry was edited (1 year ago)
in reply to pluja

Debian. I've been running it on my "daily driver" personal desktop/laptop since -97 (Debian 1.3).
Changing now would be major undertaking with no apparent upside, so I won't.
in reply to pluja

Fedora Workstation is what I use for my desktop. If I were to have to reinstall now I'd do Silverblue.

For my home lab I do Proxmox with a couple of VM's for Ubuntu server for pihole DNS servers and an OpenMediaVault VM for my docker workloads. I'd probably do CoreOS or IoT if I was starting over there though.

in reply to pluja

Arch or manjaro because I can find so much more stuff in AUR.

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in reply to pluja

Gentoo and Debian. Debian will let you get back to what you really want to be doing whereas gentoo gives you excellent granularity over everything, but can be overwhelming and time consuming.

Really should ask yourself what you'll be mostly doing and pick a tool (distro) that let's you accomplish that.

in reply to pluja

So I use Arch for my personal work. I never had a problem with stability. I've also started to be interested in NixOS, but I'm gonna just use it as an Server OS, I feel like it makes sense with the infrastructure as code implications.
in reply to pluja

Currently NixOS having been a long time Arch user. The power of Nix is unbeatable once it finally clicks.
in reply to AsinineMonkey

I keep hearing about NixOS, is it possible to leverage both NixOS and the AUR from arch?
in reply to DudeWithaTwist

If you mean use both at the same time, you can! If you check out the website for Nix (or Guix, its Lispy cousin), instructions are provided for installing it alongside your current distro as an additional package manager for those who want to use it without reinstalling or using a vm.
in reply to pluja

Gentoo, for its user choice and lack of bloat. I've been using it for a long time, and can create my own packages for personal use if I don't mind them looking like Frankenstein bodges, so that's another plus. It's stable enough if you stick with actual stable-marked packages and don't go out of your way to shoot yourself in the foot, and if something does go wrong at the distro's end, 1. they usually fix it pretty fast and 2. rolling packages back is easy if the older version is still in the tree (and usually still possible if it isn't, although it can get kind of involved).

Would I recommend Gentoo to another user? That depends on which user. You kind of have to be either knowledgeable or willing to learn—it isn't a "just works" distro, although some things have been streamlined in recent years. You do have to put a little time into maintenance, but it's usually on the order of less than half an hour a week.

in reply to nyan

Also, the excellent documentation and helpful user base makes it quite possible to learn your way around the system from install and onwards.
in reply to pluja

I keep coming back to Fedora and I used to hate GNOME but I've learn to appreciate it "just working out of the box".
I used to be config tweaker master but now appreciate things just working for the most part without me touching it.
in reply to pluja

Try Void Linux, or just stay at Arch.
If you want to try Nixos (my current distro), watch this video .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGVXJ-TIv3Y

This entry was edited (1 year ago)
in reply to Sivaru

I've checked voidlinux.org/, looks nice but there is no screenshot! How can I decide without screenshot?

/s

Sivaru doesn't like this.

in reply to pluja

unless we're talking about my main machine, which runs gentoo, i'll always default to alpine. super solid base system and packages. super accessible when it comes to upstreaming packages. I only wish they had s6 as an option for init/service manager
in reply to gkpy

Gentoo and Alpine are both really great distributions.
in reply to pluja

Immutable OS with flatpak, snap or appimage.

While there is still lot limitation using only flatpak, snap or appimage, i believe that in the next decade they will slowly grow and end up that packaging nightmare.

So we can have an OS up to date, latest app without worrying any breakage. But i'm not well versed and dunno if people and dev will follow that road.

I think it's time to ditch apt, dnf, rpm, aur. I imagine it would ease dev work but i'm not sure.

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Unknown parent

owatnext
To me, Debian is almost perfect.


I agree, but ever since systemD, well...

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in reply to pluja

Fedora for me as it seems to work the best for my hardware, will be moving to Kinoite when I get the chance. i already am using distrobox and Flatpak in general. Tried NixOS (with Root on ZFS) but couldn't get hp-wmi module to work on on it. I was having some problems with Opensuse Nvidia drivers (wakeup from suspend didn't work sometimes). The one thing I miss on Fedora, that Opensuse has is Full-Disk Encryption.
This entry was edited (1 year ago)
in reply to pluja

After my terrible experience with EndeavourOS and its atrocious community I'm distro hopping again. Currently having a bad time with Gnome Nobara, might try the KDE version but I do prefer something that doesn't require a reinstallation or complicated upgrade methods. Would be great it rolling distros wouldn't just self destruct though. Maybe I give OpenSUSE Tumbleweed a chance. I heard it is supposedly more stable.

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in reply to DarkThoughts

What bad experience did you have with Endeavour and its community?
in reply to pluja

Xubuntu for "I need this to just work" daily driving, and assorted other stuff for screwing around with. I like the idea of immutable OSes and have considered silverblue and am watching the development of vanillaos...
in reply to Trent

in reply to ffhein

Yeeeerah, I tried 23.04 too and was surprised how buggy bits of it are. I had screensaver issues too, though not quite as bad. I never could manage to get the notification widget to actually work. I gave up and dropped back to 22.04 LTS.
in reply to pluja

If you are looking for stability with latest updates, then Gentoo. But I won't recommend it to a distro hopper.

Besides than Arch and Mint are my general recommendation.

This entry was edited (1 year ago)

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in reply to pluja

I've always felt that Arch has the least amount of personal compromises. For "bleeding edge," it's also generally stable and has a wealth of community support and documentation.
in reply to pluja

For the past six years it has been Kubuntu, but I think it's time to finally abort Canonical and their idiosyncrasies and choose Debian as a KDE base, especially now that Debian 12 includes non-free firmware by default.
in reply to Lemmchen

This is what I need to do. Just too much inertia in my own stuff to make the switch so far.
in reply to Lemmchen

I kinda hope they rebase KDE neon to debian. That would be dope.
in reply to pluja

zorin. im just so lazy. Every so often I try something else looking for something easier. I would really like to use cubeos but likely not going to happen. oh and sourcemage and maybe once im retired.
in reply to pluja

Arch because I like simple.

Other distros are an exercise in patience I think. Each Ubuntu version has different names and versions of stuff like docker, mysql and everything else. It's really annoying to work with. I assume all six month distros are like that. And you have to add extra repos, keys and whatnot for it to even find things.

With arch, since it's rolling, I just install the latest version and I already know the command. It's always the same. Always.

There are many reasons I like arch but the simplicity of the installations is one of my favorite reasons to use it.

in reply to non_feistel

Devuan is awesome, but I've moved to Void! Devuan is a ripper though!
in reply to pluja

Debian -- The Universal Operating System

Because it's universal, runs on everything rock solid and stable.

This entry was edited (1 year ago)
in reply to pluja

Unpopular opinion: Antix Linux for workstation, because:
1. It's Debian
2. Very lightweight (100mb on RAM)
3. Live to RAM
4. Frugal installation
5. Small size ISO (1gb) with full function utility
6. Flexibel recovery, from old to modern system
7. Responsive (no systemd)
8. Retro-kind WM (icebox-wm), perfectly match on retro system

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in reply to pluja

I semi-regularly distro-hop, but Xubuntu is the distro I keep coming back to between hops to take a break or when one goes (temporarily) dormant. It's currently running on my primary server/linux machine.

Reasons:
1.) It's light on resources
2.) It's very simple and clean.
3.) It works with all the programs I use regularly; only one needs to be hand-compiled (but that one has to be compiled for literally any Linux machine).
4.) I know it. Scrub/partition/install/configure in under an hour. I can pick up any of my projects again immediately where I left off.

in reply to pluja

Arch for me, I use Aur as a crutch to avoid compiling and managing source projects, i love pacman and rolling releases, and it's very easily customizable (ofc once you learn the system).
in reply to senslayer

I wish I could have the AUR without the rolling release, or more realistically I use arch without utilitizing the rolling release. I'm on such shitty + spotty + capped at 100gb I only update my system once a month. Haven't had problems though, so I guess im not complaining. Updating my windows VMs is significantly worse
This entry was edited (1 year ago)
in reply to pluja

Void Linux. Super stable and offers an easy and lightning fast package manager. I'm not sure of your use case but it has been great for me on an older Dell precision laptop for work.

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in reply to pluja

Xubuntu - great ootb configuration, lightning fast on my old thinkpad without compromising on functionality
in reply to pluja

Go to? Probably Mint. Such a good distro. Unfortunately I recently joined camp KDE Plasma and no other desktop environment can even compare.
I'm on Fedora KDE now. Solid distro for now at least.
If I need to return to monkee: EndeavourOS
This entry was edited (1 year ago)
in reply to Holzkohlen

EndeavourOS is the way! 😎😉
It's my daily driver, coming from Linux Mint.
in reply to pluja

Slackware is still my go to, but I have many diatros installed on VM's.
in reply to pluja

Anything Arch, because it's hard, it's a pain in the ass and as an intermediate user I need Arch to break on me so I can fix it and learn.
in reply to pluja

Anything Arch, because it's hard, it's a pain in the ass and as an intermediate user I need Arch to break on me so I can fix it and learn.

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in reply to pluja

EndeavourOS and quite happy with it.
in reply to pluja

Debian is always my go-to. Is the users are coming from Windows I might say the DE to Cinnamon.
in reply to pluja

I searched for years. Nothing really clicked...
I've finally settled on ParrotOS. Their flagship is a pen testing distro like Kali, but they have a home distro as well, I've been using it for quite some time.

Stability is huge for me, and regular updates. Privacy focused, based on Debian.

Hope this helps your search :)

This entry was edited (1 year ago)
in reply to pluja

Fedora because it's robust, stable, mature and has a fairly up-to-date package repository. Plus, it has spins (ISO flavours) with different DEs/WMs installed, including i3 and even Sway!

If you want a Linux distro that just works and gets out of the way, Fedora is for you. I've been using it for years now and see no reason to switch.

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in reply to Liam Mayfair

Same here, Tried about 10 distros and always end back with Fedora.

Been using it full time on my 2 desktops, and 2 laptops for 2 years now without ever thinking about trying another distro.

in reply to Liam Mayfair

I think I enjoy using Manjaro more than Fedora but I always end up back on Fedora because it just works correctly all the time
in reply to pluja

Manjaro - because everyone else seems to only be voting for Arch itself here. Manjaro is actually very stable, but I did sometimes have some trouble with AUR updates clashing. I like it because it stays relatively up to date and I don't have to do any major reinstalls or upgrades. I've been on it for a few years and never have lost data or was not able to get it started (even if it did need a manual kick-start once or twice). Like any distro, over time you become savvy around what to use and what to avoid.

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in reply to GadgeteerZA

rentry.co/manjaro-controversie…
in reply to Radin

I thought we're supposed to just mention what we're using and why. Should we also tell others why they should not use what they're using? That could start the distro wars all over again, just when we all became united in our differences ;-)

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in reply to GadgeteerZA

I use Manjaro only because it makes others upset.

Also, I installed it a few years back and it just keeps working fine for me.

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in reply to pluja

For stability, I would definitely suggest a immutable distro

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in reply to pluja

This entry was edited (1 year ago)
in reply to pluja

I use Pop!_OS on my desktop and laptop. Prior to that, I would distro-hop like it was my job. I bought a system76 laptop and figured, why not. So, I had Pop preloaded on it instead of Ubuntu. Here's the reason I ended up settling on Pop as my one-and-only distro.
- Based off Ubuntu/Debian, which I am most familiar/comfortable with
- No Snaps
- Flatpak supported out of the box
- Relatively rapid deployment of updated kernels (currently on 6.2.6), so no need to worry about hardware support
- Tiling windows that are well implemented
- Backed by a company, but one that shares the same values as me
- Stable, even with semi-rolling release nature of it

The downsides are that their choice of colors are god-awful. I get it, it's their company's colors, but I don't think it looks really all that good on an operating system. I've gotten used to it, and don't care as much anymore.

This entry was edited (1 year ago)
in reply to phrogpilot73

I've been on Pop for a couple of years now (?3), I just keep upgrading, and nothing breaks. It has all the applications I need, no snaps, I'm very familiar with ubuntu/debian systems, and it just keeps ticking along. Usually I'd distrohop when whatever I was using would crap out, but Pop just keeps trucking along
in reply to pluja

Nixos, as stable as debian and as rolling edge as arch
and if i break something i can just rollback.
in reply to Steamymoomilk

This man knows. My whole config is stored in github. Super easy to come back to a perfectly setup box or clone it on another machine.
Unknown parent

FaeDrifter

I've slowly over the last 16 years come all the way around to Fedora. I started with Ubuntu Feisty Fawn, explored Mint and then Debian, then played around with Arch, moved to Opensuse Tumbleweed when it began, and now all Fedora and Fedora derivatives.

I think the most interesting Fedora projects rn are the immutable desktops, Silverblue and Kinoite. I might consider testing out Opensuse MicroOS when the desktop versions are more stable.

Unknown parent

mrmanager

I wouldn't call it rock solid... It was running old versions of kde with lots of bugs. Bugs that had been fixed months ago.

So I don't know. It's good we have choice but I don't personally see Debian as more stable than arch. I see it as having older bugs than arch.

This entry was edited (1 year ago)
in reply to mrmanager

KDE could fix 80% of it's bugs overnight and it will still be the most bug-ridden DE by a longshot
in reply to pluja

I use Arch Linux on my desktop and laptop. My servers run a mix of Debian and OpenSUSE.
in reply to pluja

It depends on how you want your update cycle.

If you don't mind the rolling release type of updates where you get updates ASAP, EndeavourOS does the job nicely. It's based on Arch Linux like Manjaro, but unlike Manjaro it only uses its own repository for its own, distro-specific extra software, everything else is from Arch's repos. If you remember Antergos, it's basically the spiritual successor.

For those who want a stable update cycle, I would recommend either Linux Mint or Fedora. I've had a solid experience with Fedora, but my friends really like Mint as well.

For those who want to be able to mix and match stable and unstable packages, Gentoo is the way to go. The nature of its package management allows you to mix and match stable and unstable versions at your own leisure, at the cost of long compilation times. It depends on whether that's worth it for you, but it's worth mentioning.

in reply to owatnext

I decided to switch to Devuan a long time ago, because it's an opinionated Debian that align better with my preferences. The Devuan community prefer the simple solutions like ALSA, sysvinit (and others), udev independent of systemd, would rather avoid dbus and so on.. the thing is I've never made the switch. I'm now running old old stable Debian with sysvinit, ALSA etc.. but soon™ when I decide to clean up the mess that is my computer, I'll rebase to Devuan which does what I want out of the box :P
in reply to pluja

You'll be happiest using whatever you're comfortable maintaining/troubleshooting. I've spent ~20 years playing with many different distros for one reason or another and the only one I can't stay away from is #gentoo. As with most things, everyone's got different tastes, that's the great thing about having so much choice.

Nobody's reason for "the best" distro is gonna be the right one for you. You'll know what's right for you because it's the one you always want to use more than any other.

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in reply to eshep

I’ve been itching to try Gentoo again after being away for many years. I remember setting up portage overlays to get Wine running CS 1.6 back in the day. I had done a stage1 install one time for the hell of it and it was faster than it ever was on Windows. I’ve been wanting to chase that sweet performance… funrollloops or something. Haha

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in reply to pluja

I use NixOS on my main PC.

If you want to use NixOS, you have to be willing to read.

Two things are especially difficult:

Coding: You will have to learn the Nix-specific way for everything you do. How does Nodejs work in NixOS? How does GCC work in NixOS? How does my IDE work in NixOS?

Using unofficial packages: The nix repos are very large and you'll most likely find everything you need there (or on flatpak/flathub). But if something isn't there, the easiest way tends to be packaging it as a nix package yourself. And that's something many people probably don't want to do.

The coding thing is annoying enough that I may switch away from NixOS at some point.

Other than that, NixOS is great.

in reply to crystal

I'm trying to solve problem with coding in NixOS with Distrobox and Archlinux container with all the tools for development. Work fine for me.
in reply to pluja

I am typically on Arch on all my machines since 2006. For a while I bootstrapped new machines using EndeavorOS, but usually stripped out their packages and returned to vanilla arch. Since I now prefer ZFS as root fs, I am back to installing from scratch, to get exactly the layout I want.
in reply to pluja

Linux Mint is my go-to. It's stable and if I want the latest update of anything, I use one of these:

  • PPA
  • Flatpak
  • Docker

I think people underestimate how useful docker can be for running various stuff, I have few semi-permanent containers for some software and it works great.

in reply to utopianrevolt

It's a containers system. It's similar to a virtual machine, you can run so-called images, which are a copy of the virtual machine that are hosted on the internet. For example, to run a mysql server: docker run -it --name mysql -p 3306:3306 mysql:8. This will run an interactive container (-it) called mysql (--name mysql) which will run the version 8 of mysql (the image name and version, mysql:8) which will forward the port 3306 from container to the port 3306 on your host PC (-p 3306:3306). You can have multiple containers, so for example multiple mysql versions (they can't have the same host port if they're running at the same time).
in reply to aport

Yep, most features and most bugs. I go back and forth between kde and Gnome when a bug annoys me too much.
in reply to pluja

I distro hopped a lot in the 2006-2011 era, and eventually settled on Arch. I like the initial simplicity, the wiki was and still is the best resource to this day, and anything I needed from the kitchen sink was accessible via the AUR. I've ended up using it on my workstations, work laptops, and personal machines ever since.
in reply to sLLiK

Does Arch have built in disk encryption?

I'm on Manjaro but I'm sick of having to unlock the LUKS drive encryption every time I start the computer

don't like this

in reply to chockblock

Isn't that the point of full disk encryption, to make sure you're authorised to boot? That at least is the behaviour on a Mac if you enable full disk encryption. Or do you mean every time you wake it from sleep?
in reply to yourdogsnipples

Basically on Mac, your login password decrypts the drive which is what I'm hoping for with a Linux distro, rather than having to decrypt the drive and then log in
in reply to chockblock

AFAIK, if you want disk encryption on Arch, you gotta set it up yourself (i.e. follow the wiki).

And last time I installed manjaro (couple years ago), the installer would let you decide whether you want disk encryption or not. So nobody is being forced to use it.

Then again, if you are tired of it, there likely is a way to effectively disable it for your current install. But most likely that will be quite a bit more involved that just unchecking it during install.

This entry was edited (1 year ago)
in reply to bellsDoSing

I do want disk encryption enabled, I just find the boot & login process on Manjaro a little clunky and I've heard its a little simpler on other distros.
in reply to bellsDoSing

I do want disk encryption enabled, I just find the boot & login process on Manjaro a little clunky and I've heard its a little simpler on other distros.
in reply to pluja

I’m running NixOS on my laptop and I really like it though I haven’t been able to get Resilio going. It’s challenging sometimes but when I have things the way I want them I have a great sense of order. So it’s the most satisfying Linux I’ve tried.
in reply to Jerry

No I haven’t. You recommend it? I’ve otherwise been happy with Resilio for years.
in reply to fly_paper_love_maker

I've been using Syncthing for a couple years and it works pretty well. Haven't tried Resilio but the main difference afaik is that Syncthing doesn't have an iOS client and Resilio isn't open source.
in reply to pluja

This entry was edited (1 year ago)

PasserOfTheBuck doesn't like this.

in reply to s20

Maybe you can help me. I have a computer hooked to my TV. The usage is 99% displaying YouTube and 1% displaying other internet content.
It is running Mint. Getting YouTube to come up takes an eternity. I'm wondering if a different distro would fix this. If so, which one would be best? I need it to run Firefox well because I want to use the ad blocker. Ideas?
in reply to Professorozone

I would not expect another distro to fix this, unless the computer's hardware is very old or very slow. If that is the case, I would try to combine an extremely lightweight window manager with an extremely lightweight distro.
in reply to amanneedsamaid

Well yeah, the hardware was thrown together from stuff I already had. It plays fine, it just takes forever to start. I suppose I could update the mobo/cpu.
in reply to s20

As a Fedora user, I don't understand why you care this much about RHEL? I agree the decision is very bad, but Fedora is downstream from RHEL and

  • Is not owned by Redhat (although they are it's sponsor)
  • Will never go closed source, as it is community run and this would infinitely degrade the quality of RHEL.

If you really prefer using Fedora, I think the paywalling of RHEL's sourcr code has little to no affect on you.

This entry was edited (1 year ago)
in reply to amanneedsamaid

You make good points. My jumping off the Fedora ship was a knee-jerk reaction to the RHEL doofusry, and not one based completely on rational thought, sadly. And now I've been hopping around spending more time researching stuff and trying things out than getting things done lol.

So yeah. I might just go back to Fedora...

in reply to s20

Yeah, I almost distrohopped for the same reason!

Even if you do go back to Fedora, you're a more experienced user than you were before.

in reply to pluja

Alpine Linux, repositories contain most software for a desktop and server, minimal base system, fast package manager. I would only recommend it to an advanced user that does not use proprietary software as most of it will not run because it is linked against glibc but alpine linux uses musl libc.
in reply to pluja

Personally, I've been running Debian everywhere (both on my servers and for desktop use) for a few years and I've found it much more reliable than Ubuntu. Sure, the repos tend to be somewhat out-of-date (unless you're on testing, which I've started using more and more and have yet to experience any actual problems with), but most of the time it makes no difference and if I really need the latest version of something I can just spin up a Docker container.
in reply to pluja

On my desktop I run Debian 12 (stable) and on my old laptop I have been playing around with Peppermint OS.
This entry was edited (1 year ago)
in reply to pluja

I tried quite a few of distros and I keep on going back to Fedora. A lot of things come out of the box such as Flatpak, it won't pester you about the password when you just want to install a app and i barely find myself solving issues with command line.

My other two favorites are Mint and Pop, i can recommend these to beginners and I really just like a good out of the box experience, avoiding command line where possible. Are there others that tick these boxes?

in reply to denny

Update for Fedora, my ride and die
in reply to pluja

Lubuntu my beloved. Ubuntu enough for me to google myself out of anything but lightweight enough to make me feel good about what I'm spending cycles/battery on... and familiar enough that I don't need to learn a whole new desktop paradigm when all I'm gonna do with the desktop gui is start an app anyway.
in reply to pluja

I love Kubuntu. Plasma reminds me of windows 10 layout which I prefer over the windows 11/ Mac drawer layout.
in reply to pluja

I use manjaro, if you like the up-to-dateness of arch, with the polish and ease of setup of popos, it may be a great candidate for you.

don't like this

in reply to dadarobot

Not bashing but for awareness: github.com/arindas/manjarno

wawowiwe doesn't like this.

in reply to health437682

I mean you are allowed to, I just will have lots of questions, starting with Why, and moving on to no really why.
in reply to pluja

Not to long ago I would of said Fedora but recently I've switched to OpenSUSE Tumbleweed and I'm really enjoying it. Still learning the ins and outs though.
in reply to pluja

I've tried basically every reasonably maintained distribution, and keep coming back to Arch. It just feels right. And it just works right too. The package manager is excellent, and that is one of the things that makes or breaks any distribution for me. I also love that it comes with nothing, so you know what you get, and it'll be setup how you want it. With other major distributions, I spend a considerable amount of time removing things first, which is something I just don't want to do.

I've been trying out NixOS recently. I really appreciate what it is trying to do, but the complexity of nix-command is quite overwhelming

in reply to pluja

Debian stable, the os for 50 year old nudists.

It’s the stable branch of one of the oldest distributions around.

in reply to pluja

I would highly recommend EndeavourOS. Its basically Arch linux on easy mode. It takes care of updates without much fuss.
in reply to thinkyfish

EndeavourOS is definitely my favorite desktop distro I've used. I'm pretty heavy on command line because my brain likes it and I really enjoy the lack of any graphical package manager where you just have to use command line to update/install stuff. Feels very clean and I haven't had any stability issues that I haven't seen in other distros.
in reply to ronflex

It's there no option to update things with a GUI or do you just prefer to use terminal. Currently trying to decide between mint and endeavor. Haven't used Linux since Ubuntu way back in college in like 2011
in reply to pluja

Fedora XFCE, The only 2 times I ever have to touch the command line are for flatpak and for updateing, so I am not sure if I would recomend the XFCE spin, but I would recomend Fedora, probably the KDE, only because I for what ever reason cannot stand Gnome, I do not know why, but I just cannot get my workflow to work with gnome
in reply to pluja

Tried a lot of distros and finally settled on openSUSE Tumbleweed. Rock solid for a rolling release. If anything ever goes wrong, there's Snapper to rollback without a breaking a sweat.
in reply to pluja

Well I would have normally said Fedora but with the current RedHat issues I'm thinking of making a switch. but in my opinion Fedora was always rock stable and leading edge. currently looking at an alternative.

amanneedsamaid doesn't like this.

in reply to pluja

I've been using Arch Linux as a daily driver for about two years I believe. As with any other distribution, it depends on the user's preferences, experience and needs, whether or not I'll recommend them Arch.

What I like the most about Arch is the customization from the ground up, the rich, detailed and yet user-friendly Arch Wiki, the AUR (although one shouldn't depend on it too much) and that after the installation everything seems more trouble-free than the distributions I've tried before. Arch almost never broke for me and even then fixing the issues weren't a big problem. It's not as difficult as it is often portrayed.

Nor is it as easy as it is often portrayed. A new user could be comfortable starting with Arch Linux, but it doesn't hurt to have experienced another distribution that is intended to be user-friendly.

in reply to TheV2

Having spent years on Gentoo and done several installs, installing Arch the other day was a wall in the park and felt natural. I had to learn the new tech stack (nmcli, pacman, arch-chroot) but after that it was basically easy mode. You mean I don’t have to define compiler flags and feature flags and I don’t have to wait for it to compile or set up a cross arch compiler farm?
in reply to notfromhere

This is how I feel about Gentoo too but I use Void as a daily instead, no systemd and it feels more like what Arch used to be (e.g. Runit is like 5k SLOC whereas systemd is 100s of k's).

Not bashing but everything seems well engineered with less cruft/bitrot than Gentoo. Of course there's less customisability xbps-src is pretty decent at doing the job, or just write your own templates :)

in reply to pluja

Debian and Mint are my favorites. I love the included games in Debian, the UI for both (Using cinnamon), and their ease of use.
in reply to pluja

Used to be Arch, now I shill for Debian.
in reply to marmalade

What put you off Arch? I just started using it on an old (2015 era) notebook and it seems pretty decent so far
in reply to notfromhere

Nothing really. Arch is still great, I just kept having stuff happen where I’d suddenly find out there was a new bug in something at inopportune times. Just the nature of being bleeding edge. Nothing broke severely, but like if you want to join a Zoom call or play a game with friends or something, having something break randomly that you have to fix, even if it just takes a quick search or 5 minutes of troubleshooting can get tiresome.

Also, all of the customization stuff that Arch allows is not as appealing to me anymore since my skill level with Linux has reached a point where I can get super granular with pretty much any distro. Add to that flatpak reducing my need to depend on the AUR, and there you have it.

in reply to pluja

Gentoo, Void (Daily), Alpine or Antix (Bootable USB).
in reply to pluja

Don't yell but Fedora/Ubuntu was my first exposure to Linux so I'm prejudiced toward them. I didn't have a lot of exposure to 'nix in the 90s since the family only had Windows.