which distro and why do you prefer it over others?

GravitySpoiled@lemmy.ml to Linux@lemmy.ml – 59 points –
155

Okay, let's play this game :D Mint, because it's frickin easy and fulfills all my needs while being stable enough for my work laptop

I just built a laptop and I always choose Mint. I used the XFCE spin and it failed me. Everything worked well except the second monitor screen. I just could not get it to display proper 1080p. I tried forums and changed a bunch of configurations.

I ended up getting Fedora on it and it worked out of the box. Oh well. Fedora it is then.

You're playing Devils Advocate, and you probaly know it xD

Anyway, I prefer NixOS for it's declarativity, reproducibility and immutability.

Example: You want nginx with acme setup? Just tell it to, and NixOS will figure out the steps to reach the desired state.

NixOS is amazing. Literally a perfect distro. I use it on my personal server, and getting things up and running is both faster and more reliable than with Ansible. I have 2 VPS with identical configuration, one for testing, and the modularity of the Nix language makes this extraordinarily easy.

It's funny seeing other distros claiming they invented a solution to problems NixOS solved 20 years ago. Immutability? Atomic upgrades? Containers? Good job, Fedora!

Whats a good begnner nix yt or blog etc. I just got a beelink n100 i want to use as my guinnea pig with nix

Honestly, Nix's documentation is terrible. This is a good start, but eventually you will have to solve your problems with a lot of googling, browsing Nix forums, reading NixOS's source code (99% of which is written in Nix) and reading furry blogs (for some reason, a disproportionate amount of Nix bloggers are furries). I'd recommend installing the OS and trying to configure it however you like before trying more advanced stuff like flakes or packaging new software.

My experience with Nix is that I'm knowledgeable enough to use it somewhat properly and know which concepts to use and when, but it took me months and lots of trial and error to reach this point. At some point, it just clicked, and now I'm comfortable with it just like I am with regular Linux. And I find it MUCH better. On my server, I can add a new service and integrate it with my LDAP in 15 minutes. No way doing it by hand or using Ansible will ever be this fast AND reliable.

Thanks. Been running ubuntu as daily driver for 10 years and looking to change it up. I hate snap and where its going. So good as time as any. Will move desktop eventually if i like it enough as long as i can game as easy (amd/amd) via steam.

I started using nixos three weeks ago. I use it every day on desktop now, and also switched my homelab serve to it. These videos on Vimjoyer's channel where a great starting point. I recommend trying to go straight to using a flake to update your system instead of channels. Its confusing to get setup, but makes so much sense once you do.

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

Vimjoyer's

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.

My problem with Nix stuff is the lack of documentation. When I tried home-manager, I had a bunch of issues with undocumented config options and such

Debian, because I can just have a computer without needing to fiddle with a million things. I work in tech and don't want to mess with any more code or configurations if I'm on my own computer. It's worked for me for 5 years and has worked for others for 30 years.

Don't mean to be overly combative here, but how does Debian preclude you from having to fiddle with things? Do you just like all the defaults then?

I love Debian myself, and I use it for all my personal projects where something needs to run unattended because it's rock solid, but there are still a lot of defaults that I want to change every time to make it suitable for me. Now admittedly I'm fairly opinionated about these things, but I mean, out of the box the default editor is nano (!). So as a result I created a "fiddlescript" that's a mile long and that I run on every new installation.

Honestly, most of the defaults are good enough for me. I just run vi and it does the job well enough. If I need to configure a good dev environment, I'll just install stuff with apt-get install and mangle stuff onto my PATH.

And honestly, nano as the default makes sense, it's lightweight and gets the job done. I still have that as my default.

Fedora is the perfect balance of stable and up-to-date, so that's what I'm using on my desktop. I've got Arch on another laptop too because it's so easy to use; it has my favorite package manager and basically every program in existence in the AUR.

You can have both! Just install Distrobox and set up an arch container.
I do that on Silverblue and it works great :)

Arch or EndeavourOS, depending on the machine's purpose and my mood at install time. I prefer rolling release, and pacman + AUR is a lovely combination.

openSUSE Tumbleweed because it's bang up to date and utterly reliable.

Agreed. I want rolling release so I'm up to date and don't have to reinstall when a major version upgrade inevitably breaks something. OpenSUSE Tumbleweed gives me that in a reliable little package. It has its quirks, but I'm trying to learn as I go.

You know what? Ubuntu. There I said it.

I’ve been using it since 2007 - 7.04 was my first foray into Linux ever. At present day it’s been the most “it just works” distro for me. I installed it and… that’s it. Everything just worked.

I don’t care about the “ads” in the terminal. I don’t care that it’s “bloated” (even the most bloated distro is less bloated than Windows).

If a company is porting their software to Linux, chances are they’re focusing on Ubuntu. Not Debian. Not Mint. Ubuntu.

If something isn’t working, chances are there’s a community post about it with a working solution.

It’s cool that distro hopping is a hobby for a lot of people. It isn’t for me. I want no bullshit, just set it up and let it work so I can focus on doing stuff within the OS, not setting up and fine tuning the OS itself day in and day out. And for me that’s Ubuntu.

I don't use Ubuntu on my desktop but in my experience it performs on par with other distributions and it is not a RAM hog either.

I thing "bloat" is a big mythical monster people like to throw around because it's difficult to argue against and scares everybody.

I think snaps were slow to load to begin with but I also read that it was much improved recently, one can also install Flatpak.

So I think Ubuntu is a great distro, performant and stable.

I like to think of Ubuntu as the distro that just works. Easy install, tons of guides, tons of apps in deb form, minimal use of console.

My only issue with Ubuntu is that I effectively have to have two app stores to get everything I want. I'm not the biggest fan of Snaps, but they aren't showstoppers for me. If Ubuntu Software supported Flatpak (and fixed .deb installers) I'd happily daily drive it.

Started with Mandrake a long time ago and when it went away turned to Ubuntu and have stuck with it ever since. Surprised no one mentioned LTS (long time support) which I think is 5 years. This means for servers you don't have to worry about frequent upgrades (think fedora) and for desktops my setup stays stable for a good while.

I try other disros in VMs just to try sexier stuff but for production stick to Ubuntu.

Fedora cause I can't be bothered to deal with anything distro specific. It stays as close to upstream as it can and I like that

Same. I have Fedora 38/39, depending on when I last booted a machine up for updates. Started on Caldera OpenLinux and compiled most everything back in the late 90's, then moved to Suse, then Ubuntu, then Mint because of Snaps, then Pop_OS!, and now Fedora because it's like @Secret300@sh.itjust.works says.

Fedora, it's bleeding edge, but stable enough for a daily driver. Also, most things work out of the box.

It's not bleeding edge, it has a release cycle of 6 months.
It's more leading edge, since it uses the most modern technologies like Wayland by default, btrfs, and so on.

SteamOS because it comes bundled with the SteamDeck...

If it wasn't for updates deleting everything I install with Package Manager I'd have no complaints.

Daily Driver, use it for work and school, only gotten better with time

Debian GNU/Linux because of its emphasis on free software. also, it's an operating system that doesn't make me feel its presence. couple it with a stable desktop environment like xfce and it becomes a good combo. I've installed it on all of my machines. be it server or home devices. it's my universal operating system.

though in office I'm provided an ubuntu machine, with which I'm also content since at the end of day, it's GNU/Linux. it's all that matters to me.

Debian. Huge repository, no bullshit, and basically any software for Linux is packaged/compatible with it.

I haven't used many, but after fucking with Ubuntu, Pop OS and Mint I switched to base Debian 12 and it's the cleanest my desktop PC experience has ever been. My computer doesn't do anything I'm not expecting it to, it doesn't have any bloatware, every program I've installed has worked clean out of the box exactly as advertised (except for the occasional Proton/Wine wrangling which is universal).

Fedora Silverblue and Silverblue specifically. I used to run Arch and did all the cool things from DE customization to custom kernels and other cool shit with scripts and so on. Now I just want a system that I know will boot and just do it’s thing

I'm been slowly migrating all my computers over to immutable distros, either silverblue or universal blue.

Once you get used to the container paradigm, you can do all your customization and easily copy it over to other machines without fear of breaking anything.

Plus, having automatic updates and knowing that you'll always boot into a reliable machine, it's the best.

Linux Mint Debian Edition. I mention it a lot on here, but it really is my favorite distro. I have been using Linux a long time, and I'm old. I don't care to spend a lot of time and effort tweaking and configuring. LMDE gives me everything I need and is usable out of the box, while not standing in my way when I need to get shit done.

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Is this question going to arise every month?

That's rather optimistic. I'm pretty sure it's daily. Although, perhaps it's only once a month that it gets upvoted

It shows people are interested and exposure to Linux is growing. It's a good thing.

Fedora.

They have solid community and financial backings, they do tremendous work pushing the Linux desktop forward, it's close to vanilla and the sweet spot between stable and bleeding edge (aka "leading edge") for me personally.

Fedora, because the packages are up to date enough for me, and I've never experienced any breakage.

I use Arch (btw). It's not that I prefer ir over others for anything in particular, i'm just used to it by now.

(that's my personal laptop, the computers in my offices are either Debian or Ubuntu)

It's funny, I switched off Arch.. probably 8 or 9 years ago now, and went to Fedora. At that point I just kind of became a Linux user, instead of a Linux enthusiast. I moved to the Apple ecosystem about two years ago, getting sick of Google's shit and deciding to go all in.

Now I'm coming back to the fold, and getting back to AOSP since I still don't want to deal with Google's bullshit. As I get deeper into ROMs, I'm realizing just how uncomfortable I am in Fedora. It's easy, it works, but there's a certain lack of control that really makes me uneasy. As I start messing around with Arch again in a VM getting ready to install on my Thinkpad, and in WSL on my work laptop, it's like I never left. Sure, I have to learn a bunch of new stuff because a lot has changed in almost a decade. But it's less about Arch, and more about changes in the Linux landscape. I feel so much more comfortable, like coming home after a long time away.

I have Arch (KDE) installed on my desktop at home. I have been using it for 6 years and I love it, especially the AUR! This month I have been mostly using my laptop and I am using MX Linux 23 KDE which is great! I really find it's tools very useful when I need them (which is not often, but I am glad they are there).

Nix-Darwin , DayWalker of Distros, all of the strengths, none of the weaknesses

Wait a second, so that basically turns MacOS into NixOS?

It lets you configure macOS with Nix, at least. Options where they exist are kept similar so you can share some NixOS configuration with nix-darwin. These and these modules in my configuration are shared between both, for example.

KDE Neon: the stability of an Ubuntu LTS base without the snaps and other Ubuntu nonsense you may end up having to deal with in Kubuntu, with all the latest versions of KDE software directly from KDE themselves. They say it's not a distro, but it pretty much is.

Same for the same reasons! If they say it's not a distro, then what do they say it is?

Arch, because the packman animation when installing packages is very nice.

Fite me.

You mean the w/ ilovecandy animation or the default animation? One of these options will make me fight you.

I'm using endeavouros but it's too long to type and I'm lazy, hence arch. It seems that endeavour has ilovecandy by default, so that one.

Have you heard that sweet tooth causes addiction?

Void Linux +1

It's organized beautifully. The tools are lightweight and easy to use. The package manager is a joy to use, fast and lean. Partial updates won't break your system. It's rolling but not bleeding edge which provides robustness of the system. Runit, the init system, is also a joy to use. Super easy to use and minimal.

xbps is absolutely lovely. It may not have concurrent downloads, but it manages to be quick anyway!

Have been having great luck with the move to Linux, Garuda on my main desktop pc and fedora bazzite on my laptop.

While we are starting fights with our opinions, I absolutely love KDE plasma.

Moving to Linux has made me so happy. I feel like a computer owner / user again. It's not always perfect but nothing has stopped me dead in the water and my issues have resolved in a few minutes of tinkering.

openSUSE Tumbleweed or MicroOS. I've since long given up on so called "stable release" distros, because a boon to me is to feel like I'm not using software from the stone age, which is what I feel every time I have to use a RHEL, SLE or Ubuntu system.

I've used Tumbleweed on laptop and desktop for about 6 years. Never has anything crashed, or at least nothing has ever become unbootable. The most damage ever done by an update was a regression in mesa that made 3d accelerated content absurdly slow, but even that was fixed within a few days.

I use MicroOS on almost all my servers and it's rock solid.

zypper is slower than pacman, apt and dnf, but it's extremely usable and easy to work with, even in enterprise scenarios. I'd say it's basically on par with dnf, usability wise.

openSUSE in general feels extremely stable, and I just love that they went btrfs by default a few years back and just seem to have this future proofing aspect.

Fedora for my Laptop: It just works out of the Box and everything is close to vanilla

EndeavorOS. It’s based on arch which has great nvidia driver packages if that's your thing and the arch wiki is amazing.

A nice package manager wrapper is bundled. Do yay to search for any package and install it; do yay (nothing else) to upgrade everything, and yay -Rcns to remove stuff and all their unused dependencies. I also recommend chaoticAUR which is also easy to setup. What is the AUR, you ask? A repository for user-created ways to install TONS of stuff, think homebrew (including cask, unseparated) but on Linux

For the DE I recommend MATE but you can select any of the major ones in the installer
Get synapse for a spotlight-like search; it uses the alt+space keybind by default

I use Guix. It's fully free, it's basically the de-facto GNU system, and I like the features of the Guix package manager.

How is the experience? Packages, updates, desktops, flatpak, podman etc? Nowadays most apps work everywhere but the core is different

I've not been running it for very long, so I can't comment in depth. But, installing packages is easy (guix install), updates are quite easy (guix pull && guix system reconfigure /etc/config.scm) (but it is an unstable rolling distribution so sometimes updates need to be pushed along with --keep-going if they fail). I'm using EXWM so I can't really comment on DEs but it has Plasma, Gnome, XFCE and a few others so it can be quite familiar.

A nice thing about updates is that you can very easily roll back to a previous point in GRUB. Whenever you run system reconfigure it puts a new point in that menu.

I haven't used Flatpak so I can't comment.

The only thing that might be annoying to some people is the kernel it uses by default. The mainline Linux kernel, which for some reason permits proprietary blobs, is not used. Linux-libre is used, which kicks them out. Which means if you don't have hardware that has been fully freed, you'll have problems.

I believe mainline Linux can be installed by changing some things in the system config and adding an extra repository, but it'll build by source instead (since Guix is a build-from-sourve distribution with transparent binary substitution where they are available). And of course, then you'll make the de-facto GNU system run proprietary software. Which is certainly an odd thing to do, but if your hardware requires blobs to run then you unfortunately don't really have much of a choice.

Oh, and that's another point. You configure pretty much everything in config.scm. Users, kernel arguments, etc.

You can also use the GNU Hurd kernel if you want, but unless you have very specific hardware it won't work because of the lack of drivers so for most people right now that's meaningless.

It's not really a distribution friendly to new users, but I'd love to see it succeed. Maybe I'll write a nice installer and package manager GUI for it in the future?

Damn that sounds great! Build from source when needed too, this means everything will just run?

I am curious about using the linux libre kernel, as modern hardware doesnt often even support / has a ported to coreboot.

I have a Clevo NV41MZ next to me and I will soooon coreboot it. Also a Thinkpad T430. One will get Nitrokeys heads (as it seems to be updated better, or I should just compile heads) and the other one Dasharo.

But these firmwares both require blobs, still wayy better than proprietary firmware, but just to see how crazy this is, all these machines everyone uses are proprietary unupdated garbage.

Really curious about Guix, want to try it out. I really like Flatpaks now as I am on Fedora Kinoite, so nearly every distro will just work for me as long as its modern and has Wayland and systemd I guess

It's kind of similar to the AUR, if someone writes a script to build a program for Guix you can install it. Either from the official repo or a third party one.

The blobs in Linux and the blobs in your BIOS are different. Coreboot support isn't linked to linux-libre support, but modern devices can often be quite difficult.

Guix uses shepherd as it's init system, so you might not like it. I think the init scripts are written in GNU Guile, but I haven't played around with that.

Fedora over Ubuntu. Ubuntu nowdays seems lost it's soul...

Fedora and Gnome workstation is the best ootb Distro I ever hold.

Also Fedora Xfce spins ovrr Linuxmint or Xubuntu. They are first class, stable, and bleeding edge.

Nixos.
The ability to have my whole system in a git repo is what i have been looking for when i did not know it.
Steep freaking curve though and the documentation kinda blows. But its the distro ive spent the longest on apart from Arch, and i feel quote at home even though most stuff is done differently.

Also, mixing stable and unstable packages; also nix run/shell/develop. On the other hand, error messages sometimes outcompete those from cpp in being confusing AF 🤣

Nix package managers have the worst error messages. But I like it for it's reproducibility. I'm contemplating moving over to Guix, as the Guile language is quite developed, and the GNU folks are taking a dive into experimental Guile REPL for debugging services and apps, which is going to be quite interesting.

I did some research on guix when i was deciding which one of the two i was going to try as a daily driver.
My conclusion was that choosing guix would mean choosing a smaller community and amount of support for a better language.

Would love your opinion if youve done your research on it. Why choose guix over nixos?

choosing guix would mean choosing a smaller community and amount of support for a better language.

I used both NixOS and GNU Guix System, and my conclusion is the same. Things are already hard on NixOS, in Guix it's order of magnitudes harder. Not worth it at all. Besides, there's a flake for using Guix on NixOS, so can just use that.

Most of my reasoning is experimentation to alternative form of OS interaction, and I would not use it for serious computing. NixOS is a different thing - since I have only one laptop, so I took the gamble, and I've enjoyed it, but if I can afford another device, I won't do something risky like that again without playing around with a VM. I've toyed around with Guix, and I've enjoyed it, but my justification for switching over to Guix in the nearest future is:

  • The first reason is pretty lazy, but GPL-3.0 license.
  • The second reason is that it will be a environment tied with a specific functional programming language (in my case, Guile). So, if I want to diagnose stuff, I can, for example, use the Shepherd REPL, which will support Guile. In a way, Guile will be a nice addition for sysadmin.
  • Similarly, I do not see a reason to stick over to POSIX conforming shell standard, because most of the stuff will be done by the Guile expression, right? With some exceptions like having to run CLI binaries, most of the shell will be pretty useless for me. I would not care about minor inconveniences like having to add a few extra characters, like for example, (run ( --help)) instead of just --help. So why not just switch to something like scsh, but the Guile equivalent? I could just replace shell with Guile REPL (haven't tried this in great depth, so I'm not confident) or gash (played with this a little, it's quite similar to POSIX-respecting shell).
  • The fourth reason is that I've come to appreciate Guile more, despite it being hard to read as a first timer to Scheme-like language. I know that Nix is more and less of a DSL, but perhaps that is why I'm not interested in it, because the NixOS repo is polluted with multiple scripts, and if I were to maintain a project, I want to make sure to reducing adding multiple languages or tools as much as I can, to keep it simple. Guile can also fulfil that role.

Void Linux

The name is really cool

Mint (MATE). It's preconfigured closest to what I want, with just a couple tweeks I can do whatever I need with utilities and a GUI I'm familiar with.

If Its a headless machine Ubuntu or Debian. Again familiar with both can do whatever on both without having to relearn low to build a wheel.

Primarily a windows user but I do use Linux for some applications.

Interesting to see Ubuntu for headless? Since it's such a desktop-focused choice. What are your thoughts?

I ask because right now my desktop and my headless are both PopOS (because I liked it on my desktop), but I was thinking of changing the headless to something lighter.

Tumbleweed. I've used Linux since the nineties so I know my way around but I appreciate a sane default desktop install so I don't have to waste time fiddling too much.

People always talk about lean/fast/customizing, in reality most distros are performant and fairly lean/bloat free, it's just how Linux is. TW is no exception and like all the others it's easy to customize. I don't use YAST.

I can get comfortable almost any distro, though I prefer those with systemD+Wayland and Nvidia drivers in a repo so they update with the rest. I like rolling release, also considering the pace of Wayland and KDE development.

For new users I always recommend Mint.

Debian. On servers, on laptops, on desktops, even on my high speed camera. It's simple, it's reliable, it doesn't push updates that break my stuff.

Short answer: Custom Fedora Silverblue image through uBlue's template, because it offers a relatively mature and easy to use distro with unique features in terms of stability and security that's (almost) unmatched within the Linux space.

Long answer: ::: spoiler spoiler

which distro and why do you prefer it over others?

Personally, I'm very fond of atomic^[1]^ distros. What they bring onto the table in terms of stability and ***"It just works."***^[2]^ can't be understated^[3]^. I've been running Fedora Silverblue^[4]^ for the last one and a half years and it has been excellent barring some smaller issues^[5]^. While on the other hand, the distros^[6]^ I've experienced in the mean time through dual-booting happened to be a mess and I eventually couldn't continue to use them as they accumulated issues all over the place.

So far, it should be pretty clear why I prefer atomic distros over traditional ones. However, why do I favor Fedora Silverblue over the other atomic distros? Well, I try to be very security-conscious. And, unsurprisingly, this has influence on my choice. In this case; Fedora is the only one (together with openSUSE) that properly supports SELinux. While AppArmor is also excellent, it's not ideal for the container workflow atomic distros are known for; which is probs one of the reasons why openSUSE has only recently started supporting SELinux while they've been supporting AppArmor for a long time. Furthermore, while both Fedora's and openSUSE^[7]^'s offerings are excellent. Fedora has been working on theirs considerably longer and therefore their atomic distros are more mature. Thus, I ended up with Fedora. Silverblue, however, wasn't actually initially preferred over Kinoite. I started on Kinoite, which I was attracted to for how KDE Plasma was relatively similar to Windows^[8]^ and for how it allowed easy configuration out of the box. At the time, Kinoite wasn't that polished yet. So I had to rebase^[9]^ to Silverblue and the rest has been history.

There are actually atomic distros that don't heavily rely on the container workflow to do their bidding and thus don't necessitate the use of SELinux over AppArmor. Those distros would be NixOS and Guix. These are on my radar and I might even switch to either one of them eventually^[10]^. Heck, I've even installed the Nix package manager on Fedora Silverblue through Determinate Systems' Nix installer. But, to be honest, I'm most interested in Spectrum OS. Which I would define as the love child of NixOS and Qubes OS^[11]^.

  1. Perhaps more commonly referred to as 'immutable'.
  2. Built-in rollback capability. No system corruption due to power outage or anything. Automatic background upgrades.
  3. Obviously, there's a lot more I like about them. I won't do a complete rundown, but the following is worth mentioning: (Some degree of) declarative system configuration. Reproducibility. Improved security.
  4. To be more precise; at first just the stock image, but I've since rebased to uBlue's Silverblue image and more recently to my custom image using uBlue's 'template'.
  5. As much as I like Fedora, their repos could be a lot better; both in terms of available packages and how up-to-date the packages are. Furthermore, though more GNOME's issue than Fedora's, extensions add IMO excellent functionality to the table. However, they sometimes behave very unpredictable in an otherwise very predictable environment. For example, enabling the blur my shell extension somehow forces me to log out right after I try to unlock my screen; probably caused by the gnome-shell crashing for some random reason.
  6. Which would be EndeavourOS and Nobara.
  7. Which would be openSUSE Aeon and openSUSE Kalpa.
  8. Fedora Kinoite was indeed my first experience on Linux 😅.
  9. Which actually felt like a magical experience for how easy and effective it is.
  10. After their infamously steep learning curves have been conquered.
  11. Best desktop OS in terms of security and privacy. :::

Servers I run Debian, I do not want flashy I just want stable and tested security fixes.

I could not hack being that far behind for my desktop OS however (which I run on three different devices), so I run Ubuntu, which I remove as much Ubuntu and Gnome baggage as possible such as snaps and by running Sway.

I should really swap to a different distro that also has Debian as its root but without the stuff I don't want and Sway by default. However I also want stuff to be simple and up to date, as I make my money on my desktop PCs, I cannot afford for it to be a PITA every time I try to install patches.

I do have one PC running arch, but its mostly for the memes (and for PIKVM)

I did used to be Red Hat through and through. I started with Linux back in 98 using Red Hat CD ROMs, but I left for Debian over some previous controversy that I do not remember now, years before the Centos stuff.

Debain on servers because it just works.
Arch on desktops because you got basically every software package you'd ever need in the AUR and it's somewhat stable.

Arch because I'm too lazy for a non-rolling distro. I should really set up snapshots and my dotfiles repo on my new laptop though (:

Nobara bc my first year of using Linux had some rough patches, and I just wanna turn my brain off and game for a while with minimal troubleshooting.

I'll start distro hopping again soon tho

OpenSuse Slowroll (rolling release with constant updates plus an update burst every two months)

  • Prefer rolling release over fixed release.
  • I do like OpenSuse in general.
  • I install a lot of packages and want to stay up to date (security & GUI notifications). With OpenSuse Tumbleweed I have to install a couple gigabytes of updates every week. It's not ideal for me.
  • Too impatient to wait for the proper release of Slowroll.

Kubuntu. The support and stability of Ubuntu but with KDE Plasma 5 (not a huge fan of gnome), and probably one of the more straightforward distros to use in my experience alongside Linux Mint or Pop!_OS

Debian because the swirl looks cool and the installer makes me feel old and sophisticated without having to be old and sophisticated.

I'm a Linux noob so I don't have a distro preference yet but I'm currently using Fedora KDE spin. It's pretty nice.

NixOS. There are lots of great things about it (like atomic upgrades, easy rollbacks, no dependency hell, safely mixing stable and unstable packages, and more) but it's killer feature is that (almost) everything about the system is specified in a single config file

I started with LinuxFT from a magazine coverdisk. I also installed it on an old 486 at the office. It became the "internet box". The company director at the time believed Bill Gates that the internet would be a fad and wasn't worth investing in and would not put any money into the company internet connection. So, it was an old 486, running LinuxFT, with a modem calling out on demand, squid proxy, email boxes etc. But it worked.

After that I moved to Redhat (before it was paid for). I remember for sure installing RH5. It was definitely a smoother experience.

Server wise, I went through various distros. Once I got to debian, for servers I never really left the "apt" world. Management wise, it's just too easy to work with. Hopping between Ubuntu and Debian even now.

For firewalls I've been through ipfwadm (Kernel 2.0.x), ipchains (Kernel 2.2.x) and iptables (Kernel 2.4.x). Now, there is some newer stuff now. Nftables, but there hasn't been a "you must change" situation like the other two and as such, I've generally stuck with iptables, mainly because when I did try nftables I had a real problem getting it to play nice with qos. Probably all fixed now, but I'm too lazy to change.

Desktop wise. I dual boot windows/linux. Linux is Manjaro, and I like Manjaro, for the fact that gaming generally just worked. However, I feel like every major upgrade I am chasing broken dependencies for far too long. But, when it works, Manjaro is great. However, I have had several failed desktop experiments. I ran Gentoo way way way back, I think I had an AMD Athlon at the time. I thought it was great, I mean building stuff for my specific setup, nice idea and all. But upgrades were so damn slow compiling everything! I tried Ubuntu, but I never found the desktop to be any good. I did also have Redhat way back in the late 90s. But the desktop was just poor back then.

Arch. It has pretty great documentation and I like having the safety of knowing what's on my computer. Other than those two things, I just like arch I guess. There isn't anything wrong with other distros.

Use whatever distro you feel comfortable with. That being said, there are definitely good ones and bad ones. I use Arch btw. That's the beauty of Linux tho. You can try a distro and if you dont like it you can literally install a new distro over the old one by blowing away everything but the /home partition. Did I mention yet I use Arch? I use Arch btw. The package managers are such a great tool to get a system up and running in a short time, but you can always compile everything from scratch if you want. You can config your programs with the default settings and let the OS do it for you, or you can micromanage every single config option and take a little more time to personalize your machine. I've told you I use Arch? I use Arch btw.

Yeah, Linux is great! And in case you were wondering I use a distro called Arch Linux.

I just distro hopped to nixos. I was unaware of it until I came to the fediverse. The declarative system, once you get over the small learning curve, I feel is very easy to understand and configure. Creating and being able to roll back system configurations is a great feature too.

Previously I was using void. I quite enjoy it too and am sure I'll revisit it. It's a light (no systemd) rolling release distro with an emphasis on stable packages.

Debian for me and Linux Mint Debian Edition for anyone I help with computers, because I don't want to configure a system more than once and to investigate why some stuff doesn't work.

Arch, becaus AUR and rolling. Alpine, because lightweight. opensuse tumbleweed, because rolling and SUSE does cool stuff. NixOS because declarative. Guix, because declarative and bootstrapping.

Those are just the distros I use, I'm sure others are nice too.

I keep trying other distros, and then coming back to Debian unstable XFCE. Linux Mint Debian Edition is ok. At work I did lots of Enterprise Redhat, but I'm glad I don't have to use it after I retired.

Fine, let's have it your way.

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Gentoo because it's what I know, and I know enough to make it do what I want.

Linux Mint Debian Edition for reliability with some user-friendly additions, dual boot with Garuda’s gaming edition because it pretty much sets up everything on its own for that purpose and has the latest updates.

Arch because the packages are recent. Arch has no shiny innovation and even the performance is not that fast, but I always find a way to make everything working. It is the only distro like that for me.

EndeavourOS. I like having a relatively bloat-free setup. It's also been nice because it's been easy to manage so far.

I like Void because it makes me quirky.

Just kidding.

I like Void because it makes me quirky, doesn't require me to learn how systemD works, AND it is lightweight! Plus it has literally never broken on me.

Arch is great, but it needs longer explanations considering the user needs to do a lot more. Sometimes you find them, but other times you find a snarky superuser with zero people skills.

It's a shame they aren't government standard, so I could take a local course to become a snarky superuser too.

Most of it involves everyday Linux usages, but some of it is specific to Arch and it breaks so hard. It's not a great thing when you're stupid busy and don't have the headroom to get to the bottom of it. Sometimes all you get is vague theories on how a fix might occur. After that you're playing shell games trying to debug your problems.

Definitely recommend for pro-Linux people that have a breakable laptop that can go on the backburner.

I might have missed the part why you prefer it over others

In working through the installation I was the least disappointed I've ever been with an OS. The result was something I truly liked. If I nail down every single problem it could be my all time favourite machine.

Artix. I went Void -> Arch -> Artix. I can't help but feel that Artix is what Arch should be. Perfect blend between the Arch and Void experience.

I ran Artix for a while but went back to Arch. Maybe I missed something obvious, but it didn't seem like there was a nice way even to pacman -Syu on Artix because there were so many packages that were in both the Arch repositories and the Artix repositories. And you couldn't get away with only Artix repositories because there was so much they didn't have that the Arch repositories did have.

I assumed it was just that Artix kindof wasn't quite mature enough yet. But again, it's entirely possible I missed something obvious. I might well be interested to give Artix another try if so.

As far as I understand only Arch packages that depend on systemd need an Artix equivalent. You should be able to enable both Artix and Arch repos and everything should be fine, you should be able to run pacman -Syu without any problems. I never had problems in the last 3 years. If you tried it more than 3 years ago it might be a different story.

void linux. it uses runit and it's a rolling-release. i like runit because i don't like the systemctl command for some reason. doing ln -s /etc/sv/serv_name /var/service and sv up serv_name is way nicer imo.

Manjaro, because it's rolling release and it's built on Arch, only the necessary stuff is installed (including a desktop environment), you can set it up with just a few clicks, and it works out of the box, and even proprietary GPU drivers are easily installable with mhwd. Stable and reliable.

In case anything breaks, there's quick help on their forum, which (when it happened to me once) outperformed customer support of proprietary software.

It's been my daily driver for almost 8 years without any major issue.

So in short, robustness, rolling release, simplicity, community.

Edit: I have to add, my use case is for a desktop PC for software design/development + a little gaming.

Same here, I used to use Arch but just got tired of constantly tracking down conflicts during upgrades. Manjaro may be hacky but their hacks seem to get things to work smoothly 99% of the time. I install it on computer illiterate relatives and friends because I know it's not going to create a support nightmare for me, and I still get all the software one could want via the AUR.

Hell, I have one cousin that's convinced that he has a Macbook because I set up KDE to look like MacOS. I haven't had to fix anything on that laptop (except printers) since I installed it for him 5 years ago. He just does his updates via Octopi and carries on.

Fedora Kinoite because it doesnt suck and doesnt break. Actually switched to ublue kinoite main, very close to upstream with minimal changes that always stay the same (its always the same difference, not weirdly diverging more and more from upstream).

But I dont know if it is the best model, as Fedoras BTRFS snapshots + ostree without the image based thing would sound better ? But this is not existing.

Btw Nix, Flatpak, Distrobox/Toolbox, Distrobox/Toolbox with root, Podman, Docker, layering, removal, are all things that work on Fedora Atomic. Maybe even snap if someone is brave enough to try

It may be a little behind on updates at this point, but HML is still the best.

Ubuntu because it requires the least amount of hack fixes to get working.

And snap has vastly simplified software installation.

I've moved to Ubuntu after getting burned pretty badly with CentOS's getting mistreated and eventually killed. Ubuntu feels stable enough, both in terms of their updates/quality and in terms of their corporate proceedings (such that I won't get absolutely blasted by mandatory repos being closed down, for example).

I don't really have a "better distro" preference -- all distros can be tweaked and optimized equally, with no benefits from one another. And yes, even Ub(l)untu.

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zorin os. most out of box functionaility of any distro I know. its a lazy os and im lazy. just want to install and go.

I prefer Arch (btw) due to the fun of installing it and If it breaks then you that process again with onother de or a different setup

Manjaro, it's like a pre-configured Arch.

Isn't the whole point of Arch that you get to configure it yourself? /g

Arch do argue themselves that it is the point of Arch that you configure the system yourself: https://archlinux.org/about/ Of course, one can build on top of it with different aims. Manjaro claims to be user-friendly on their homepage, but I can't find further philosophy/about/design decisions where they explicitly state why they changed certain things.

I'd argue the main point of Arch is AUR - it's really good.

The main point of Arch is the Arch Wiki. Joke's on them, I steal from the wiki all the time and I don't run arch at all.

Yeah, that's why I prefer Manjaro.

All of the benefits of rolling-release + AUR without the hassle of configuring everything myself.

I was Arch for a long time but now I'm on Fedora. Most of my servers are Ubuntu server, but I'm switching some stuff to fedora server. I've always disliked Ubuntu for some reason.

I started at Sarge, went to Ubuntu Warthog until Eft, and went Suse and Fedora but then changed to Xubuntu Ibex. I stayed until Vervet and since then have found a very comfy home in Arch.

Fedora Silverblue! 😊

Immutable Linux is the future (and any container-based filesystem )

Immutable Linux are just a path for yet another ecosystem twisting the developer/sysadmins workflow to the point things will require further centralization and/or subscriptions to something.

I'm in the same boat but the future is distant and there are still a lot of stones blocking the way

Arch, because I can never be happy except when I'm bickering with a machine.

Seriously, though, I like the control and the learning factor. I enjoy knowing what my computer is doing and why, AUR is great, and the documentation is generally top-notch. Once you get past the point in the learning curve where everything is on fire and you don't know why (don't forget the 'linux' package when you pacstrap, kids!), it's a delight to use

Arch, because of the AUR and because I can't get fully used to NixOS. Also, I know my way around Arch better tban any other distro. I tried my luck on Debian and it didn't go that well, but I'm willing to try again soon. (If only I could get Hyprland on Debian....)

Advantages: has all the software I need, new versions as well.

Disadvantages: lacks a stable branch (I recently found myself with limited/no internet access for about 2 months; if Arch had a stable release, I wouldn't have had to rebuild my NixOS system over 100 times while I was trying to get a decent DWM setup.