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?
Debian stable, the os for 50 year old nudists.
It’s the stable branch of one of the oldest distributions around.
I would highly recommend EndeavourOS. Its basically Arch linux on easy mode. It takes care of updates without much fuss.
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.
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
Debian for servers and debian for desktop. Debian everywhere!
This is the way.
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.
@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.
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
@notfromhere It’s only gotten better.
My daily driver is Linux Mint running Cinnamon. It doesn’t get in the way. Servers run Debian stable.
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, and the fact that it’s always the latest version.
Mint for work and home.
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
mint
it “just works” and I dont have to update it constantlybut my daily driver is endeavourOS
This is the way.
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.
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
It used to be Fedora, and I still want it to be Fedora. It was solid, stable, cutting edge, and easy to work with both on the command line and in the super-up-to-date Gnome desktop. DNF is great once you make a few tweaks, I don’t care about systemd, and it supports all of my hardware with basically no tweaking right out of the box. And the Anaconda Installer isn’t all that bad once you get used to its idiosyncrasies. I’ve been a distrohopper for like 15 years now, but I always end up hopping back to Fedora. Or I did, anyway, but with IBM-RedHat’s shenanigans as of late, I’m looking for a new home. Current thoughts:
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I used to run Arch (btw), and could go back to it, but I’d prefer something more brainless to maintain (Arch isn’t hard to maintain - check updates before you install, be careful with the AUR, it’s golden - but I just don’t have the spoons anymore). It’s actually what I’m running on the laptop I’m using to post this.
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I’m not going to use Ubuntu or anything else involving Snap because I hate dealing with Snap (YMMV - I know it has its fans, but I don’t like the way Canonical is handling it’s stuff there, and I only have room in my depression-addled brain for one universal package format).
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I love the new Debian, but the Gnome desktop is already out of date, and it’s just going to get farther behind. I have to decide if I want to give up cutting edge Gnome in favor of holy-Mary-Mother-of-God stability.
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Some up and coming immutables look very interesting; blendOS and Vanilla OS in particular, but also OpenSuse Aeon. Just not sure I’m ready to go immutable, old grognard that I am.
But seriously, RHEL - just re-open the source code, thanks, you asshats.
Edit: I really need to learn how to proofread before I post.
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.
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…
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.
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?
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.
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.
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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.
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
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?
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
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.
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.
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.
Mint. Simple, stable, efficient.
For desktop Linux, I use Arch. It’s a community driven base distribution, so the needs of the community are what drives development and there are no financial decisions of a company that get priority, which is refreshing. It also has access to the latest and greatest that Linux has to offer.
They have a philosophy of expecting basic effort from users and to have a tinkering mindset. Historically, Arch devs and users have a reputation of being grumpy greybeards, but many of the rough edges have been rounded off in the last few years. If you are willing to do a bit of reading or watching some YouTube videos, it’s not really that hard.
You can really build a lean and powerful machine that has just the software you want on the system with Arch. All it takes is a little effort and willingness to ask for help from the community after you have tried and failed to solve problems yourself. It’s really not the badge of elitism to use Arch in 2023. It’s never been easier to use and doesn’t blow up on you nearly as often as the reputation implies. Just use good hygiene and make snapshots so if you blow it up, it’s only a 5 minute recovery.
