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.
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Tuxedo OS. Same idea as smth like mint or PopOs but (imo) done much better. It also has rolling release for some stuff (like the DE) and non-rolling for other stuff (not even sure what bc I don’t really look in detail). It also uses KDE plasma my favorite (and imo the best) DE. It’s got pretty good app availability in terms of official packages because it is based on Ubuntu LTS (now 24.04). There are a couple things that are vestigial on most computers bc it was made for tuxedo computers but these have no negative effect on other devices in my experience.
NixOS because all the other ones differ about as much as Windows 10 from Windows 11. Guix doesn’t count.
from the comments, there’s a split between
- linux as a tool: debian, mint, fedora, opensuse, etc.
- linux as a toy: arch, gentoo, nixos, etc.
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
‘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.
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”
Both are tools
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
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. :)
Different distros for different uses:
- Debian with KDE for my casual servers and Docker boxes.
- Nobara for my main gaming PC.
- Linux Mint with Cinnamon for my general purpose PCs and my #JustWorks uses.
- Arch for my pimp mobile test machines.
Alpine:
- Rolling release (Alpine Edge) yet stable
- Extremely lightweight
- Very customizable
- After setting it up I find that it works very well
- Decently sized repo
- OpenRC rather then SystemD (I prefer the way it handles services)
I wonder how hard is it to download apps on Glibc-free systems, On Systemd-free systems ik there is Flatpack and stuff , asking this bcs many apps on Linux only work on Glibc.
I personally haven’t ran into any yet, tbh I have more issues with SystemD dependent apps (Also keep in mind Alpine packages and maintains apps in their repo so they don’t require GLIBs/SystemD)
Ohh, so only open source apps and closed source apps that work on non glibc/systemd then ig
I managed to get Steam working with some work, heroic games launcher worked with no extra effort, and everything in the repo is good (Alpine is independent)
I remember hearing somewhere steam doesnt work on musl,So i assume you used flatpack steam.
Yeah, I just need to add an argument before the command. I set up an alias so its simple to launch.
Knew it
Is that usable for regular Joe or enthusiast grade?
I wouldnt call it enthusiast grade, every day usage is easy but installation can be tough (it gives you a barebones system).
Then that is not for me yet.
I use Ubuntu because it’s the most popular and well-supported.
I’m going to be switching to Mint at some point because it’s basically a community-run fork of Ubuntu and I don’t trust Canonical anymore, but it’s hard to justify installing my OS from scratch considering I’ve been using Ubuntu since 2017.
I recently ordered a Thinkpad T14 Gen1 with an R7 4750U, 16GB of RAM, and a 512GB SSD and you better believe I’m going to be putting Mint on that as soon as I get it.
Mint. I used to distro hop so much and just got tired of having to reload everything. That was the last one I had done prior to having no more time to switch. 😅 Plus, it just works and it’s easy.
I use Debian. The current release has pretty up to date software. It’s super easy to install ( I don’t have as much time to fuck around with my OS as I used to). And it’s stable as fuck.
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.
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.
Does Fedora have a long term support version? Last time I used it a decade ago I had to upgrade every 1-2 years.
No LTS, they support each version for 1 year, and there are two major upgrades per year. I still haven’t upgraded last October.
But I never had an issue, I always upgraded using the terminal instead of the GUI.
oh, fedora,
fedora was so stable i had to run to arch-linux as there was nothing to tinker with
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.
Impressive. :)
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.
Debian. Because it’s the best about “Just Works” (yes, even moreso than Ubuntu, which I tried). It has broken once on me, and that was fixed by rolling back the kernel, then patched within the week.
BUT I’m also not a “numbers go up” geek. I don’t give a shit about maxing out the benchmarks, and eking every last drop of performance out of the hardware; to me, that’s just a marketing gimmick so people associate dopamine with marginally improved spec numbers (that say nothing about longevity nor reliability).
If you wanna waste something watching numbers go up, waste time playing cookie clicker, not money creating more e-waste so your Nvidia 4090 can burn through half a kilowatt of power to watch youtube in 8k.
(/soapbox)
My gpu is an nvidia 970 and my cpu is a 4th or 5th generation core i7. I just don’t play the latest games anyway, I’m a PatientGamer, and I don’t do multimedia stuff beyond simple meme edits in GIMP.
It has plenty of power to run VMs, which I do use for my job and hobby, and I do coding as another hobby in NVIM (so I don’t have to deal with the performance penalty of MS Code or other big GUI IDEs).
It all works fine, but one day I’ll upgrade (still a generation or two behind to get the best deals on used parts) and still not waste a ton of money on AAA games nor bleeding-edge DAWs
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.
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.
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.
Me too. Rock solid, with KDE. So easy to learn, make it mine.
I use LMDE. I use it because Mint has proved that it is worth using (for example: it provide easy way to install multimedia codec by only click “Install Multimedia Codec” in applications menu) and I want it to success.
Sorry if my english is bad
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
